Tim Bannock writes useful articles filled with tips, tricks, advice, house rules, and compilations of links from all over the web to help you improve your roleplaying game sessions.
Picking up from last time, here’s a very simple magic system for the Labyrinth Adventure Game. It’s heavily inspired by Ben Milton’s Knave, which is fitting since he wrote the adventure portions of Labyrinth. Effectively, spells are simply one-use scrolls (or whatever form you want them to appear as; I picture them etched on little stone tablets) that allow for a very specific instantaneous or short-duration special effect.
Check ’em out!
Labyrinth: The Adventure Game is a neat ultra rules-lite dungeon crawler that doesn’t get nearly the accolades it deserves. The system is fun and simple: you roll 1d6 for all tests, there’s an advantage and disadvantage mechanic, and there’s a mechanic for helping on rolls. The adventure is incredible: it’s a puzzle dungeon setup that tracks your progress, forces you to progress through the labyrinth, and presents unique mechanics on an as-needed basis in order to reinforce the macabre, fairy tale rules the party operates under when facing off against the Goblin King and his minions.
Here’s a bunch of new traits, flaws, and tools for characters to use, as well as rules for Human-Only games, which might be particularly handy for getting inexperienced (or especially young) players into the game!
In this post I’ll briefly outline a hack for Cortex Prime. This one’s best described as:
A streamlined take on four color comic book action in Cortex Prime that remains largely compatible with Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.
These hacks are prone to change, so you’ll want to check out the Google Doc for the latest version. That said, it’s kind of neat to see how these hacks develop, so what you’ll get here is a very brief overview; only the bits needed to play, and none of the commentary. Compare and see what changed!
Without further ado, let’s check out the Super Simple Superhero Hack.
Content Warning: Elder gods, evil cults, and all that entails!
In this post I’ll briefly outline a hack for Cortex Prime. This one’s best described as:
Cthulhu-style Mythos horror meets relationship drama…to preserve your sanity!
These hacks are prone to change, so you’ll want to check out the Google Doc for the latest version. That said, it’s kind of neat to see how these hacks develop, so what you’ll get here is a very brief overview; only the bits needed to play, and none of the commentary. Compare and see what changed!
Without further ado, let’s check out Dramatic Investigative Mythos Horror.
Something that trips up players and GMs new to the Cortex RPG — and a lot of games described as “narrative” or “fiction-first” — is interpreting traits that are purposely vague. This comes up when choosing what traits to use in a dice pool, as well as describing the outcomes of those dice rolls. Players and GMs may hold different expectations of what a trait means when it’s no more than a word or short phrase plus a die rating. Strength D8 might be fairly self-explanatory to an experienced tabletop gamer, but Liberty D8 or Divided We Stand D8 are probably far less so.
Let’s look at ways to define traits by taking a look at the concept of “narrative permissions” in game design, as well as the Statements mechanic in Cortex games, and see how they can help us out!
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