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  • Use Gardlings to Form Gems, Make Your Animals Spark, and Fulfill Your Dinosaur Dynasty

    by W. Eric Martin

    If you're not a fan of anthropomorphic animals, read no further and try exploring a useless website instead — but if you're good with being a gamey gopher, check out new options available to you:

    • In October 2024, U.S. publisher Thunderworks Games will release Citizens of the Spark, a design for 1-5 players from Philip duBarry that has a different assortment of critters in play each game:
    The fate of creatures touched by the spark of intelligence hangs in the balance. You must recruit strong animal allies to your city and unlock the potential of your citizens if your settlement is to survive the days to come...

    Citizens of the Spark is a variable set-up card game in which players take turns attracting citizens, taking actions, and claiming sparks. The more citizen cards a player has of a specific type, the more powerful that citizen's action becomes. The player with the most sparks in their city when the deck runs out wins!

    In more detail, you play with 7-10 animal citizen types per game, chosen from over thirty available creatures and combined into one shared deck. Every citizen type has distinct powers, making each game's action combos uniquely variable.

    On display at GAMA Expo 2024
    On your turn, recruit multiple citizens by selecting an available group of cards, placing them in your city tableau, and grouping like citizens together to grow their action strength. Next, select one type of citizen in your tableau to activate, taking the effect of the card and discarding it from your city. Keep watch on rival cities because when you activate a citizen, all players who have the same type can follow your move and activate a matching citizen of their own.

    Wondrous Creatures is a worker-placement game for 1-4 players from Yeom.C.W and Bad Comet that was crowdfunded in late 2023 and is due out in English by the end of 2024, with editions also coming in Dutch, French, and Spanish.


    Your goal in the game is to set up a creature reserve, using your mounts to gain resources and cards as you place them on an evolving hex map. You can upgrade mounts to unlock unique abilities, collect and hatch eggs to claim achievements, and add creatures cards to your reserve to gain their abilities.

    Gardlings features cute and cuddly versions of real and fictional animals, but it's not clear whether the animals have any agency in the game, so they might not fall in the category of anthropomorphic. Hmm. So many dilemmas when trying to classify games...


    In any case, Gardlings will be a SPIEL Essen 24 release from designers Kristian Amundsen Østby and Maria Østby and publisher Alion – by Dr Ø, with this being a 1-4 player game being a bag-builder in the vein of The Quacks of Quedlinburg:
    Each round in Gardlings, all players simultaneously build their garden in front of themselves. You do this by drawing and placing tiles from your bag. You may stop drawing tiles at any time because if you draw too many gnomes, they will steal gems from you. At the end of the round, use any gems you matched in your garden to buy a new tile, then return all of your tiles to your bag to prepare for the next round. Each tile features potential ways to match gems, as well as a creature with a special ability. Your garden will grow larger and better each round, and the puzzle of placing tiles will become increasingly complex.


    The goal of the game is to match enough gems to buy the victory tile.

    • What about instead of playing human-like animals, you just play as an animal...but with far more awareness of your surroundings and your potential for growth than an animal ever had?

    Designer Jon Manker will take you into that world in Dino Dynasty, a 2-6 player game coming from Ion Game Design in 2024. Here's an overview:
    In Dino Dynasty, players represent dinosaur species from the Cretaceous period that compete in various aspects of survival. Which aspects are important vary from game to game. Each game features a scenario with specific starting conditions and a set of random challenges. The player who completes the most of these challenges wins.


    The map, called the territory, is created by the players placing territory tiles. These tiles create biomes can span several tiles. It is not specified where in the world the game takes place, but the biomes are based on the ones that existed during the Cretaceous period. The map is mostly unknown at the start of the game and is gradually revealed as players spread and explore it.

    There are alternative ways to play using different map set-ups called scenarios, playing in teams and even playing several games as a campaign. In addition, a "legendary" part of the game gives players the ability to change between species inside a dynasty and save their current development over several games. This can be used to get suitable dinosaur variants to manage harder scenarios; it can also be used to get a specific dinosaur or combination of dinosaurs to best counter opponents.

    The foundation for this game is facts, what is known and theorized by the latest scientific discoveries regarding different dinosaur species, but in Dino Dynasty, the players can explore the fantasy of what could have been. What would have happened if a dinosaur had developed in an evolutionary direction other than it did? These possible changes are still within reasonable limits and are based on the real physical characteristics of the dinosaurs.
    Read more »
  • Designer Diary: Matches

    by Daniel McKinley

    This is the story of my game Matches, covering the game design and the path to being published. It's a pretty wild ride...

    A Simple Beginning

    I was a professional magician for many years prior to delving into game design, and I've learned that game design has quite a bit of overlap with putting together a sleight-of-hand routine or a cohesive magic show. I try to keep this in mind when I design games. When starting to create something in your hobby, you should immerse yourself in it as much as you can. The more magic that you can watch, study, perform, or learn, the more that you can pull from this compendium of knowledge, the more likely you are to create something unique.

    When I started working on Matches, I already had a head start thanks to my background with cards. Specifically, I collect playing cards — and not just some playing cards, I mean MANY playing cards. I currently have a collection of about 2,500 card decks: old decks, new decks, unique decks, rare decks, strange decks, funny decks, fancy decks, and more. When I got into collecting card decks, just like I did with magic, I dove in full force! I learned card games, collected books about card games and tricks, amassed a collection of gimmicks (to use a magic term), and more. Needless to say, when I got into game design, I wanted to learn as many card games as I could, and that was the basis for this new card game I wanted to create.

    Math and Puns

    I grabbed a few card decks I had as spares thanks to magic performances that led to them missing a number of cards. (Don't ask, it's a magician thing...) I put together a 48-card deck with four copies of numbers 2-10, eight aces, and four jokers. I had a fairly simple idea that one player would start by playing a card in the middle, then the other players would play cards that add up to that number. The last person standing would win.

    The idea worked to a degree, but it was missing something. Quite a few games use addition to meet a number. I wanted mine to allow players to play a mini-game for themselves if they weren't going to win the round. I added point tokens, which players could gain by playing pairs over the course of the round; players would also add point tokens to the pot when they played the same card that started the round.

    I increased the number of cards to a total of sixty, which is a magical number for games because it is divisible by all numbers 1-6. I love this number and try to use it in most designs when possible.

    With the new changes, the game now works like this: The round leader plays a number card in the middle — let's use a 10 as an example — then turns go clockwise. On your turn, you can play any number of cards so they add up to the lead card, such as two 5s, a 4+3+2+1, or even a 10. If you play the same number as the card lead or play a joker, you create a match and add another token to the lead card. The player who stays in the longest gets all of the tokens on the lead card, and all of the other players score one point token for each pair of the same number lying in front of them.

    When I realized that the whole game is about "matching" numbers in many ways, I knew I had my theme: matches! That's right, the title is a pun, and that's not where the puns stop. More on that later.

    I designed the tuck box to look like a match box, drew matches (later described as french fries with ketchup) on the cards, and changed the point tokens to fire tokens using bright orange poker chips. The package was complete!

    Prototype from 2017
    A Surprising Meeting

    With my new card game in hand, I started to show it to publishers. I set up meetings at the GAMA Trade Show, along with a few other conventions. One publisher took interest as he appreciated a new take on classic-style card games. Because we never signed the game, I'm not going to say which company this was, but I will add that this publisher spent a number of meetings and emails giving me feedback and suggestions to make the game the best it could be.

    With his advice, I created a small deck called "Burn Cards". This supplement to the normal game gives players a chance to mess with their friends. Sticking with the theme, I gathered every fire-based pun I could think of and made cards to match, e.g. "The Fire Dancer" has players trade their hand of cards, "You're Fired!" replaces the central match card with a new one, "Bucket of Water" removes all of the fire tokens from the match card, etc. This development took the game to a new level.

    After many years of showing Matches at local conventions, it grew a small cult following with a few of my convention friends, including John, who I met at RinCon in Tucson, Arizona. John runs an RPG podcast called "Legends of Tabletop", and while he typically enjoys more thematic games, the absurd theme of Matches caught his interest. We played it many times over the years, and I would use my games as an excuse to go to this convention each year and see friends.

    Returning to RinCon, a surprising meeting occurred. John introduced me to Sean of Thing 12 Games and immediately started telling him about Matches. Sean was interested in seeing the game, and thankfully I had my copy, even though I wasn't planning on pitching it at this convention. We sat down in a bar, and they enjoyed it. My favorite memory of this night was watching Sean take pictures of my cheesy packaging, sending it to his partner, and groaning at the incoming onslaught of puns from his partner: "It's the hottest game of the year!"

    Eight Years in the Making

    Thing 12 agreed to publish my game, and we worked out the details to bring it to Kickstarter at a future date. This was going to be the first of my designs to be published on its own, not self-published or part of a compilation.

    This was a very exciting time because I had almost shelved the game and stopped trying to pitch it to publishers. I live in a small city in southern New Mexico, with few gaming conventions within a short drive from my city. It's always been an uphill battle to arrange meetings with publishers, so I've had to pick and choose which of my games would most likely be published. At that point, Matches had almost made the cutting block as I was focusing more on other designs. If not for this chance meeting, the game might never have been made.

    The Kickstarter ran in 2022, and as of March 2024 Matches is being fulfilled to backers and going into retail stores. I checked on my original files when preparing this diary and discoverd that from its original inception, Matches was created over eight years ago. It has been a long journey, and I hope this diary is a form of inspiration for aspiring designers. Just keep diving into the hobby, and keep making games! You never know when you might get that chance to make your game a reality!

    What Is This Mechanism?

    Matches is a card game that shares similarities with many classic-style card games, but is unlike all of them. When teaching this game over the past years, many people have been asking which mechanisms are in this game, which is a tricky answer to give. I will try to clarify that here:

    Is this a trick-taking game? Yes, kind of. This is the closest mechanism we can use to describe how the game works. The lead player chooses the number for all players to match. However, the cards have no suits. The number acts as the "suit" for the round as all players must match the number led by adding numbers together to get the desired match. However, in traditional trick-taking games, each player plays only one card or one set of cards, then the round ends; in Matches, players continue to play until there is one remaining leader, which brings us to the next question:

    Is this a ladder-climbing game? Yes, kind of. Similar to ladder-climbing games, players continue to play cards or sets of cards until one player remains. However, in Matches, there is no escalation of the cards played; each play is independent of the previous plays. There is a rising tension to playing an exact match because that will add more points for the player who stays in the longest, but this is not a requirement to play — or even win — the game. Often, if playing efficiently, players can gain more points than the player who "wins" the round. This is done by maximizing the pairs played during the game and burning out early instead of feeding points to the "Blaze" — the collection of point tokens, a.k.a., the pot — in the center. Which makes players ask:

    Is this a set-collection game? Yes, kind of. A viable strategy in Matches is knowing when to go for the points by outlasting the others or when to focus on playing pairs during the round. For example, if the lead card is a 10, playing a pair of 5s is a power play. It uses cards efficiently and keeps you in the round for a long time while giving you a pair to score if you can't stay in for the long run. An even bolder move is to play ten 1s, giving you five full pairs to score! Unless that scares the other players into burning out and folding, which would reward you only the points on the match card (as the last person remaining scores only the blaze, not their pairs). This tension can often result in players refraining from playing exact matches to prevent the Blaze from getting too hot for the last player. So this make us wonder:

    Is this a bidding game? Yes, kind of. Like games in which bidding tokens to the "pot" is part of the experience, Matches handles this in a different way. Only by playing a single card matching the lead card will points be added to the Blaze. Players do not ante their own tokens; they simply make the Blaze more valuable by playing single cards. This gives players agency as to when to make the Blaze more valuable in the hope of reaping the rewards by outlasting others, and understanding when to play many cards and go for pairs versus when to play efficiently will differ depending on the current status of the game. But since you may want to play many cards or few:

    Is this a card-shedding game? Yes, kind of. If you don’t believe that you are going to outlast the other players, dumping many pairs could be the path to victory, but planning the timing is key. If the other players are aware of this strategy, they might jump out early and force you to take fewer points than you expected, which leads us to ask:

    Is this a hand-management game? Yes, kind of. The cards in your hand will tell you the key information as to which pairs you can score and how many times you can play to stay in the round. Will it be better for you to play the long game or collect pairs for short term? Also, one point I haven't discussed is that when the round is over, cards remaining in your hand can be kept until the next round. If you don't like the number which was lead, you can burn out early and plan for the future as the first player to burn out becomes the leader for the next round, in addition to earning 1 point for taking the leader token — that is, of course, assuming the Burn Cards don't throw a wrench in your plans since they allow players to mess with one another, which means:

    Is this game a "take that" game? Yes, kind of. The Burn Cards act as controlled chaos. They are optional if players don't want them in the game, but they can add amazingly memorable moments. They are very powerful and can alter the course of each round drastically, but they come at a cost as players must spend fire tokens — that is, their points — to play them. Is it worth three points to mess with another player? You get to decide this for yourself.

    So what is the mechanism of this game? You must play your cards in a way that best assists your current ever-evolving strategy. Playing your cards at the right time and in the right way is key to winning. Sometimes you want to play more cards, sometimes fewer, but you always want to control the cards, just like a fire. You want it to burn bright and long without getting out of hand. I have spoken to many players, and a fellow board game reviewer came up with a new term which I feel best describes this mechanism: This is a card-burning game.

    Burn bright fellow gamers!

    Daniel McKinley

    Read more »
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  • Pirates and Powerholders, The Complete Collection!
    Publisher: HikikomoriHermitage

    Ahoy There!

    A world of freedom and adventure stretches out before you. Conquer it under the flag of your beleifs! 

    Pirates and Powerholders is a variant/supplementary rulebook for running and translating 5th Edition into a campaign setting inspired by the hit manga and anime One Piece by Eiichiro Oda. This book contains enough information to create an authentic experience, and contains wholly custom races, subclasses, and a Willpower system. It contains guides and suggestions for translating various mechanics from 5e into this world, including guides for calculating bounty, Challenge Ratings, and incorporating NPC crewmembers, Navigation Tables, and many others. 

    The Complete Collection includes the base Pirates and Powerholders rulebook, as well as the supplementary materials Way of the Fishmand Master and The Gorgonia Tribeadding a new race, subclass and monster to your world of freedom! Enjoy the totality of what Pirates and Powerholders has to offer!

    Pirates and Powerholders, The Complete Collection!Price: $15.00 Read more »
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    Gnome Stew

  • mp3Gnomecast 185 – Taking Over
    Ang, Jared, and JT get together on the mics to talk about all the ins and outs of taking over the GMing duties in an existing group. Links: Pathfinder Mini-Dungeon Tome D&D 5e Mini-Dungeon Tome Coriolis: The Great Dark Kickstarter Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern Read more »
  • Girl by Moonlight Review

    A shining circle that says It’s become a bit of a meme for people to declare characters from different genres to be “magical girls.” Prince Adam lives his life, during the day, as an unassuming royal heir that hasn’t quite grown up enough to assume his full responsibilities, but when he holds his sword aloft and says “by the power of Grayskull,” he transforms into a big buff dude that can punch holes in tanks. He’s even got a talking cat.

    But a lot of those memes assume that the concept of the magical girl is really about Sailor Moon style stories. You have young women living a normal life at school, with normal student problems, who are also superheroes that need to transform into their superhero persona and save the world. But the magical girl genre is broader than those tropes. In broader terms, the magical girl genre is about someone who has magical powers that aren’t common in the society they live in, dealing with the dual nature of being separate from the world they live in, while also living in it.

    Two of the earliest magical girl creators in Japan, Mitsuteru Yokoyama and Fujio Akatsuka, have cited the American sitcom Bewitched as an inspiration. While I have watched many magical girl anime stories, I grew up watching Bewitched, so this makes a lot of things click for me. Samantha is a woman with magical powers. She comes from a culture that can’t be revealed to the contemporary American culture to which her husband belongs. She had to deal with complications in her mundane life, as well as using her powers to deal with the complications that arise from her connection to a magical other world.

    Understanding that underlying concept of being an outsider who would be less conflicted if you could be what you are, all the time, and juggling the mundane complications that everyone in your position in society needs to deal with, along with additional complications that come with being who you really are, is really important to understanding the game we’re looking at today, Girl by Midnight.

    Disclaimer

    I did not receive a review copy of Girl by Midnight, and I was a backer of the crowdfunding campaign for the game. I have not had the opportunity to play the game, although I do have experience both playing and running Forged in the Dark games, the engine on which the game is built. I have played and run other magical girl RPGs, though, so I have that going for me.

     Girl by Moonlight

    Publisher Evil Hat
    Author Andrew Gillis
    Editors Daniel Wood, Jenn Martin
    Proofreader Jenn Martin
    Cover Artists Lorne Colt, Kelsey Phillips
    Design Consultant Luke Jordan
    Indexer Sadie Neat
    Art Director Trivia Fox
    Interior Artists Carly A-F, Lonnie Garcia, Kelsey Phillips, Zak Goggins, Simon Sweetman, Raven Warner, Jabari Weathers
    Sensitivity Readers Jess Meier, Takuma Okada
    Layout & Graphic Design John Harper, Fred Hicks
    Playtesters Allison Arth, Andi Carrison, Ash Mcallan, Emily Mcallan, John Harper, Luke Jordan, Melody Watson, Nadja Otikor, Violet Miller

    A dark purple background, with shining stars in multiple places. At the bottom of the page is a light inside a tunnel of swirling colors. A face emerges from the stars, with glowing eyes, and swirling hair drifting into the colored lines streaked across the image.Girl by Moonlight Format Power, Mark Up!

    This review is based on both the physical copy of Girl by Moonlight, and the PDF version of the product. The physical copy I received is the limited edition cover, because I’m extremely weak against the powers of FOMO.

    If you have any of the other Evil Hat Forged in the Dark games, the physical book matches the digest hardcover format of the other games they have released, like Blades in the Dark, Scum and Villainy, and Band of Blades. This also has the matte finish cover that those books have. The pages are sturdy, glossy, and hold the colors in a vibrant manner. The end papers display a repeating pattern of the symbols that appear in the game, in purple, blue, green, and dark pink.

    The PDF and the book are 226 pages long. This includes a title page, a publication page, a two-page table of contents, a two-page index, a three-page summary of game rules, and a page of author bios. The PDF includes an image of the limited edition cover in addition to the standard cover.

    The book itself has bold headers, many bullet points, it’s “side bars” are actually color bands that introduce their topics in the center of the page, and the layout is in single column format. I love lots of different book formats and flourishes, but I don’t think Evil Hat gets enough credit for maintaining very clear, uncluttered formatting that still looks very inviting and attractive. They make books that bridge the gap between bold, clear formatting, and stylish presentation, better than about anyone else. Girl by Moonlight is no exception.

    The Magical Girl Power Source: Forged in the Dark

    When Blades in the Dark introduced the Forged in the Dark engine to RPG games, it was built to portray heist-based action, where the story follows a predictable pattern that moves from gathering information, performing missions, dealing with consequences, and working on long term projects. While this makes sense for games about mercenaries trying to survive the winter, striving against an enemy force, or space pirates trying to get rich while dodging the authorities and avoiding political entanglements, it may not seem to be the most natural engine for magical girls.

    Remember up in the introduction when I mentioned the expanded concept of magical girls that goes beyond the superhero style magical girl stories? This game uses the more structured, procedural format of the Forged in the Dark engine to make sure that characters think about each aspect of what the stories they are telling are touching upon. Right away in Girl by Moonlight, the book introduces the thesis of this game. Magical Girls, in this instance, are symbolic of people that belong to a marginalized community, drawing the most direct inspiration from the marginalization LBGTQIA+ people experience. If the only version of magical girls you have been exposed to has been the 90s version of Sailor Moon introduced in the United States, you may not realize exactly how apt it is to use the Magical Girl genre in this way.

    If you don’t know what I’m talking about and want a quick course, go google Sailor Neptune, Sailor Uranus, or the Amazon Trio, especially if you’ve only encountered 90s Sailor Moon. Then come back. Is it clearer now? Okay, let’s get back to it.

    It’s also probably important to point out that “magical girls” in this game aren’t limited to people whose gender identity is female. The genre leans towards portraying women protagonists, but includes characters that have a male gender identity, or do not conform to a gender binary. The term “magical girl,” however, does help to remind us that the default protagonist in these stories isn’t a straight cis male.

    The structured nature of the Forged in the Dark engine makes it very clear how each aspect of gameplay contributes to the narrative of marginalized people living in a world that doesn’t accept them, while not being able to ignore the aspects of themselves that aren’t accepted. The phases of play in this game are:

    • Obligation
    • Downtime
    • Mission
    • Fallout

    Each of these phases will look different depending on the series framework that the group agrees to use, but in general, this means that the characters will need to deal with what the mundane world expects them to do, choose what projects they want to focus on, attempt to fight back against the manifested destructed elements of the story in the mission, and deal with how the resolution of the mission affects the character’s long term goals and their daily lives.

    While there has been a trend in a few more well known iterations of games based on the Forged in the Dark engine to move away from some of the more granular aspects of Forged in the Dark resolution, most of those standards as still present in this game. The baseline of the game is taking an action to resolve a situation, rolling a number of dice based on the ratings of the action being used, modified by help provided by others and additional dice provided by taking a dangerous compromise, and taking the highest result of the dice. If your highest die is 1-3, you don’t get what you want, if it’s a 4-5, you get it with a complication, and on a 6, you do exactly what you wanted to do the way you wanted to do it.

    Downtime allows you to do things like recover from stress or start and advance long term projects. Mission objectives that can’t be resolved with a single action are tracked with clocks. Fallout can force the PCs to deal with enemy attacks when they aren’t ready, or see their opposition increase in tier, meaning that the PCs will  have a harder time advancing mission clocks against the threats they face (usually because it takes more successes to fill in a clock to completion).

    Depending on the series playset, there are aspects similar to claiming territory in Blades in the Dark. You might expand your superhero hideout’s resources, the carrier ship facilities of your bastion, or shut down aspects of an ongoing conspiracy.

    A femme presenting character wearing a crown in their hair, which is collected in many long braids. They have dark skin, and are wearing an armored breastplate with flowinging multicolored skirts coming out of the bottom of the breastplate. There is a strange structure in the middle of the page, and towards the top of the page is a humanoid femme presenting character with long hair, whose form is made of the night sky. There is a crescent moon in the sky, purple, blue, and orange clouds, and stars peeking through the clouds.Transforming the Forged in the Dark Engine

    One of the ways that Girl by Moonlight addresses the genre is by introducing Transcendence. When characters meet the conditions by which they transform, they gain access to the Transcendent special abilities on their playbook, gain the use of armor, pick up more dots in some of their action ratings, and gain increased effect. Remember when we said that the opposition tier might go up, making it harder to fill your mission clocks . . . this is one of the ways you can counter that. Of course, there are also some powerful forces that you really can’t act against unless you are transcended.

    There are a limited number of actions you can take while you are transcended. Because actions, especially in missions, represent more than just punching someone once or lifting a heavy object, this doesn’t mean that you only stay transformed for a minute or two, but it does mean that you only have so many mechanically significant, player driven moments with your transcended powers.

    In many Forged in the Dark games, when your stress track is full, you leave the scene and take some kind of long term mark or injury before your character returns to play. Instead of leaving the scene, a stressed-out character falls into Eclipse. Eclipse is like the concept of the Darkest Self from Monsterhearts. You don’t become an enemy fighting against your friends, but the actions you are taking are harmful to your psyche and push yourself beyond your personal boundaries. You leave eclipse when one of your allies performs the action that is listed on your playbook as your escape.

    All of this is meant to show that you have to fight to act as your true self and make it count, and that because you can’t always be the self you want to be, you have these shadows that fall over you, telling you that you aren’t the person that you want to be.

    The specific actions in Girl by Moonlight include:

    • Defy
    • Empathize
    • Express
    • Confess
    • Forgive
    • Perceive
    • Analyze
    • Conceal
    • Flow

    The playbooks that the game uses include the following:

    • Enigma (the mysterious character that helps the others while hiding who they are even from their allies)
    • Stranger (the character that doesn’t connect with others as well as they do with things)
    • Time Traveller (someone that knows what happens in one version of the future, and is trying to change things)
    • Harmony (two characters in such a harmonious relationship that they act together to accomplish things)
    • Guardian (the honor bound hero)
    • Outsider (the character with a shady past and a rivalry with one of their allies)
    • Unlikely Hero (the normal person who helps the other protagonists, and may not see what’s special about themselves)

    Before we move on from the playbooks, I would just like to quote how your character views the world if they fall into Eclipse as the Unlikely Hero: “you are not who they need you to be. You’re weak, useless, unworthy of their friendship. They have given so much to you, and in return you give them nothing.”

    Girl by Midnight, I don’t know why you need to attack me personally, but I’m telling my therapist about this.

    Another unique aspect of Girl by Moonlight are links. You gain links with different characters, and you can spend them in a number of ways to help one another, like recovering stress, ignoring harm, boosting an ally’s action, or preventing them from falling into eclipse. This is to reinforce the fact that the protagonists aren’t just individuals working towards a common goal, but that working together is one of the protagonists’ goals.

    A dark skinned woman in a business suit has a black crown hovering in front of her. Behind her is a femme presenting figure made of shadow. At the bottom of the page are four people. One is wearing a breastplate with a skirt under it, other is wearing a mask, a cape, and is carrying a sword, another has a huge axe/pick combination, and the last is holding a book.The Series

    A game of Girl by Moonlight is a combination of picking your playbook, and picking the series that you are going to play. Series may have special rules that affect the general rules of the game, like the shrines that grant special abilities in At the Brink of the Abyss, the modified means by which the characters must recover stress and transcendence in Beneath a Rotting Sky, the rules for bonding with your giant robot friends in On the Sea of Stars, or the intimate moment rules for In a Maze of Dreams. They also have specific series abilities that can be taken in addition to playbook abilities, as well as customized transcendent abilities.

    While there is a general theme for each of the series, the group still customizes and details the elements when they discuss what series they want to play. For example, they will often define the form the series opposition takes, where the characters derive their powers, what the mundane obligations of the characters are, and what end they are working towards, or fighting against.

    The series included in the book are the following:

    • At the Brink of the Abyss (magical girls as superheroes fighting for a better future)
    • Beneath a Rotting Sky (magical girls as supernatural hunters fighting against a corruption that will ultimately break them)
    • On a Sea of Stars (magical girls as mech pilots defending the last vestiges of human society against a destructive alien entity and its minions)
    • In a Maze of Dreams (magical girls as manifestations of the characters’ subconscious selves, investigating the dreams of others to uncover an ongoing conspiracy)

    Each of these series not only presents a different collection of tropes to utilize in storytelling, but also uses these different settings to explore different aspects of characters dealing with their marginalization in the face of the challenges they encounter. Not every setting is about our protagonists fighting hard and prevailing in the end.

    At the Brink of the Abyss is what many people will think of when they think of the magical girls genre. Characters have a mundane, day-to-day life, with responsibilities they must perform. There is a unifying villainous force that both infects day to day life, making it harder for our protagonists to be themselves, and manifested villainous monsters, which can be challenged with superheroic action. Monsters in the setting are usually regular people corrupted by the unifying evil force that heroes are working against and can often be “saved” by reaching the human within the monster and appealing to their better nature. While the PCs still need to deal with the evil force corrupting society, they can defeat evil and make the world better. Some of the people that are adversaries are just people that don’t understand how they have been manipulated. It’s an overall more positive and optimistic setting, emphasizing perseverance and communication to overcome bigotry.

    Beneath a Rotting Sky is perhaps the polar opposite of At the Brink of the Abyss. A very horror-inflected series, the evil that is corrupting society is so entrenched in the world that it’s not likely that it can ever be cleansed. If characters want to remove stress and recharge their powers, they need to consume the hearts of the monsters they hunt. They must deal with an opposing group of hunters who act as their rivals. They are portrayed as survivors, doing the best they can for as long as they can, until they can’t anymore. They try to do what they do because they don’t want to give up, not because they can win. In some ways, they are never fully free of the taint that has affected society, even when acting against the monsters of the setting, and may even come into conflict with others who are just trying to do the same things that the protagonists are doing. This series really explores the stress of existing in a world that actively resists change, and rather than moving forward, sometimes actively moves backward.

    On a Sea of Stars splits the difference between the two previously detailed series. The humans’ last bastion isn’t as open and welcoming as it should be, meaning that the PCs may need to fight to make the surviving human society better in addition to fighting against the external forces trying to destroy humanity. It’s not assumed that the PCs will succeed, like At the Brink of the Abyss, but they aren’t doomed to eventually fall, as in Beneath a Rotting Sky. On a Sea of Stars puts an emphasis on building defenses and improving the human bastions, so that they can survive while the PCs are out taking the fight to the alien leviathans, which introduces the idea that big, grand gestures aren’t the only thing necessary to be successful, but also long term planning and change.

    In a Maze of Dreams is the most conceptual of the settings. In superhero settings like the one detailed in At the Brink of the Abyss, the character’s heroic identity is often referred to as their “alter-ego,’ their self in a different reality. In a Maze of Dreams presents the concept that your transformed identity is really your “alter-Id,” your drives and desires given active reign over your supercharged form. The emphasis in this series is that there isn’t a big, obvious villain to fight, rather there are nefarious people that are subtly linked, causing harm as part of an established superstructure. Characters go into the dreams of people to determine how and if they are parts of the conspiracy, while also exploring desires and aspirations that the protagonist doesn’t fully understand. In a way, it’s trying to do what’s right, without knowing what’s right, while also learning why you really do the things you do.

    Viewing the game through the lens of the series playbooks brings into focus what the game is trying to accomplish, using both the magical girl genre and the Forged in the Dark engine as tools to that end. Each of these series explores an aspect of surviving and interacting with society as a queer individual, each one asking, “but how would it change if you had to face this?” In some ways, it feels like the ultimate experience of this game would be to play through all these series and examine what they all say, and where those narratives overlap. That said, I can also see where some of these settings would be harder to engage with. For example, I could see running or playing in At the Brink of the Abyss or On a Sea of Stars, because when I’m gaming, I like at least the possibility of a happy ending. I may be able to engage with In a Maze of Dreams if I was in the right, introspective mindset, but I suspect that Under a Rotting Sky would be emotionally taxing for me in a way I wouldn’t enjoy.

    That’s not a proclamation on what series are “good” or “bad.” I think, as a product, that Under a Rotting Sky and In a Maze of Dreams make the product feel more complete for the perspectives that those series offer. Other people are going to have different dials and perspectives they enjoy when they address these topics in a game.

    Cosmic Heart Compact
     This game is going to be a great tool for using fantasy elements to explore important issues facing queer people in modern society, as well as exploring how marginalized people survive and work to change society in a narrative form. 

    This is one of those games that I feel is just as strong as a commentary as it is as an actual game, but it balances that commentary and gamification well enough to be both. The specific phases of play support the exploration of the game’s themes by pacing the game in step with the topics introduced in the other phases. The four series do a wonderful job at touching on the same topics, while also turning the dials on the details up or down to explore the same philosophical questions with different priorities.

    Losing the Crystal Star

    I think anyone looking at this game closely will understand that it’s “magical girls used to produce a specific experience,” but it’s probably still worth noting that if you want a game that leans harder on blow by blow action against a villain of the week, the pace of this game is probably going to be more deliberate and more introspective than you want to scratch that itch. It’s not really a failing of the game, so much as an easily foreseen misalignment of expectations.

    Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

    This game is going to be a great tool for using fantasy elements to explore important issues facing queer people in modern society, as well as exploring how marginalized people survive and work to change society in a narrative form. In addition to its use as an active tool at the gaming table, both for having fun and exploring perspectives, I think that anyone that is concerned about queer marginalization, and who enjoys engaging with tabletop gaming rules will benefit from reading through this book, even if they never get the game into active use.

    If you just want to punch evil in the face after your magical girl transformation, you may still get something out of this game, just know that the focus of the game isn’t squarely fixed on that aspect of the story as the primary narrative. Even at that, there are still some series and playbooks that lean more closely to what you may want out of the game.

    Maybe someday, when enough people have played games like this, and internalized what they learn at the gaming table, they’ll realize that Samantha should have been able to be accepted as a witch even though she married a man. Her current partner didn’t make her any less of a witch, even when she wasn’t actively using her powers.

    Read more »
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    Sly Flourish

  • VideoRunning Missions and Quest Chains

    This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine

    • how we prepare them.
    • how we run them.
    • what pitfalls we might run into.
    • how we avoid these pitfalls.

    This series of articles includes:

    Your own categorization of adventure types and how to run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.

    Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.

    Understanding Missions and Quest Chains

    In mission-based adventures the characters accomplish several goals across a series of scenes. The scenes may be linear or run in a network where players choose different paths leading to different future missions.

    Often mission-based adventures take several sessions, perhaps an entire campaign, to complete. Each leg of the mission might be its own adventure.

    Each mission or quest of the quest chain might be small – like killing a fire giant boss at a burned out watchtower, acquiring one of several needed items, or getting information from the shady vendor in the Lower Reaches. In a series of wartime missions, the characters accomplish specific missions while war rages around them.

    Missions might also be built so the characters attempt to accomplish tasks before the bad guys, or the characters face a rival group attempting to complete the same or parallel quests. This competition results in an ever-changing situation as both groups follow their chains of quests.

    Some example missions include:

    • Collecting three keys (out of 5) to open the vault of Ibraxus.
    • Destroying the four sub-lieutenants of King Lucan the vampire lord.
    • Disabling the four obelisks to prevent the opening of the doorway of the Black Cathedral.
    • Conducting four missions to thwart the hobgoblin armies of Lord Krash.
    • Recovering four powerful artifacts required to defeat Orcus, Lord of Undeath.

    Preparing Mission-based Adventures

    GMs may prepare for mission-based adventures by

    • determining the overall goal of the mission or quest chain.
    • building an outline or tree for the quests in the chain.
    • filling out the adventure details of the next quest or mission in the chain with the eight steps such as locations, NPCs, monsters, and treasure.
    • outlining which quests might follow the next one.
    • determine the path and progress of rival groups following these same quests if any.

    Running Missions

    When running mission-based adventures or campaigns, the GM should

    • clarify the goals of the overall quest chain.
    • clarify the paths the characters can take and choices they can make when conducting their missions.
    • run the current mission or quest as its own typical RPG scene or adventure.
    • offer the choices for the next possible quests in the chain.

    Mission or Quest Chain Pitfalls

    When running mission-based or quest-chain adventures, GMs might encounter the following pitfalls:

    • The choices aren't clear. Players don't know which mission to follow next.
    • Players forget why they're following these quests.
    • The mission paths don't offer meaningful choices. Characters just follow the steps in a predetermined order.
    • Large chains of missions can be thwarted when only one mission is accomplished (see all or nothing collection quests).

    Avoiding Pitfalls

    GMs can avoid these pitfalls by

    • regularly clarifying the goal of the mission or quest chain.
    • clarifying the options the characters can take and ensuring each option is meaningful.
    • not running too many missions.
    • ensuring each leg of the quest chain shows clear progress towards the goal.
    • ensuring the success of a single mission doesn't thwart the large plans of the villains or characters by using the three of five keys quest model.

    A Common Adventure Style

    Mission-based adventures are one of the most common styles of adventures. Hopefully these guidelines help you keep your mission-based adventures on track with meaningful choices, clear options, and dynamic situations.

    More Sly Flourish Stuff

    Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Roll Twice and the Elven Orb – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 24 Lazy GM Prep.

    Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

    Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

    Patreon Questions and Answers

    Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

    RPG Tips

    Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

    • Show players the results in the world of the choices they made.
    • Show players how powerful their characters have become.
    • Throw in lots of low CR monsters to fireball or turn or otherwise blow away.
    • Always lean towards putting meaningful choices in front of the players.
    • Clarify goals selected by the characters often -- at least once per session.
    • Bring old NPCs back and show how they’ve changed.
    • Mix your adventure types. Dungeon crawls, heists, and intrigue all work together into a unique mashup of an adventure.

    Related Articles

    Get More from Sly Flourish

    Buy Sly Flourish's Books

    Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

    Read more »
  • VideoRunning Overland Exploration and Travel Adventures

    This article is one in a series where we look at particular adventure types and examine

    • how we prepare them.
    • how we run them.
    • what pitfalls we might run into.
    • how we avoid those pitfalls.

    This series of articles includes:

    Each article describes one angle on these adventure types. Your own approach may differ and that's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.

    Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.


    A quick note – the Lazy DM's Companion, my book of RPG tools, guidelines, and adventure generators, is on sale for 50% off the PDF and 20% off the softcover and PDF package!

    The sale ends 21 March so pick it up today at:

    https://shop.slyflourish.com/products/the-lazy-dms-companion


    Understanding Travel Adventures

    For the sake of this article, overland exploration and travel adventures follow the characters as they travel from one place to another, usually over significant distances across the surface of the world.

    Sometimes the characters know clearly where they're headed. Other times they might only be following vague rumors. The paths they follow might be well known or something they discover as they go.

    Travel adventures might be run as hex crawls, pointcrawls, or linear paths of connected locations. They could be a quick journey during a single game or run over several sessions.

    Resources for Travel

    Your chosen RPG might include material for running travel scenes. Two books offer excellent guidance and systems for running travel adventures for 5e games: Uncharted Journeys by Cubicle 7 and Trials and Treasure for Level Up Advanced 5e by EN World publishing. Uncharted Journeys offers a solid system for travel and a huge range of potential encounters. Trials and Treasure includes excellent random encounter tables, character roles, weather options for various climates, and more. If you choose only one book, start with Trials and Treasure.

    Preparing Travel Adventures

    Preparing for an overland exploration or travel adventure might include

    • defining the starting point, the destination, the distance, and the path.
    • understanding how you plan on running the journey – point crawls, hex crawls, a linear series of encounters, or a single encounter during the journey.
    • defining potential paths.
    • preparing a list of roles and activities the characters engage in during travel.
    • preparing a random weather table.
    • writing down potential encounter locations along the journey for each node in the pointcrawl or within one or more of the hexes along the journey.
    • preparing a list of encounters – random, fixed, or a mix of both.
    • writing down secrets and clues, NPCs, or treasure the characters might discover along the journey.

    Running Travel Adventures

    Like dungeon crawls, travel adventures can follow a particular model of gameplay. This procedure includes

    • clarifying the starting point and destination for the journey.
    • asking each player to select a role for the journey – scout, pathfinder, quartermaster, etc. Characters might instead choose to aid someone else.
    • roll on a weather table each day to determine what weather the characters deal with that day.
    • expend daily resources such as food and water.
    • have the characters roll ability checks based on their role. A scout may notice creatures before the creatures notice the characters. A pathfinder may stay on course or get lost. A quartermaster may give the characters temporary hit points or lose resources.
    • roll for monuments or other notable features as they travel or use one of your predetermined locations.
    • roll for random encounters. Even if they don't encounter something, you might roll to see what came by recently or what might be coming. You might roll twice and mix two encounters together.
    • move on to the next day.

    Pitfalls for Travel Adventures

    Here are some common pitfalls for travel adventures:

    • Too much time is spent on travel when the real story is happening at the destination.
    • Too many downward beats or hard encounters – it feels like a slog.
    • Travel feels like a needless chore or time-wasting filler.
    • Travel doesn't offer meaningful choices or actions.

    Avoiding Travel Pitfalls

    Here are some ways to keep travel on track.

    • Drop in relevant secrets and clues the characters discover during their journey to tell them about the world, its inhabitants, and elements of the larger story.
    • Include interesting monuments to solidify specific locations and encounters and act as catalysts for secrets and clues.
    • Include roleplay and exploration scenes, not just combat encounters.
    • Run some easy encounters the characters can resolve many different ways.
    • Let characters get the drop on monsters and give them the choice to fight them or not.
    • If travel isn't interesting or challenging, shorten it or skip it completely and get to the more important scenes the players care about.

    A Bridge Between Other Adventures

    Travel adventures are often a bridge between one part of the story and the next part. With careful planning and execution, travel can offer stories just as interesting as other types of adventures.

    More Sly Flourish Stuff

    Last week I posted YouTube videos with Thoughts on Obsidian for TTRPG Prep and the Lazy DM's Companion Sale.

    Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

    Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

    Patreon Questions and Answers

    Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

    RPG Tips

    Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

    • Challenge high-level characters by attacking several vectors: AC, various saves, area attacks, advantageous terrain, flippable environmental effects, and so on.
    • Benchmark encounters with the Lazy Encounter Benchmark: A battle may be deadly if the sum total of monster CRs is 1/4 the total of character levels; or half of character levels if they're 5th level or above.
    • Tweak the Lazy Encounter Benchmark based on what you know of the characters. Really powerful? Pretend there is one additional character of the party's level.
    • Warn players when they're going to enter a long fight. Change the fight midway and keep up the story to make long battles interesting.
    • Include switchable terrain that works against the characters at first and for them later on. For example, an unholy effigy gives evil creatures advantage but gives characters advantage when turned into a holy effigy.
    • Level characters after significant accomplishments in the story.
    • Damage is the biggest threat a monster offers that doesn't take agency away from the characters. Want a bigger threat? Do more damage.

    Related Articles

    Get More from Sly Flourish

    Buy Sly Flourish's Books

    Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

    Read more »

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