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Defining Your Traits in Cortex Prime and Tales of Xadia

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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Knave: Using 5E Backgrounds to Determine Starting Gear

Since the launch of Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, one of the features I’ve enjoyed the most is Backgrounds. These archetypes are a fun and simple way of differentiating characters outside of the mechanical rigor of classes and lineages, and they tie characters to the game world. They might tell us what your character’s occupation was before embarking on a life of adventure, or tell us where they are from or how they were raised.

Knave is a beautiful, elegant OSR system that is getting a 2nd Edition over on the Questing Beast Patreon. One of the things I’ve been tinkering with is adding 5E Backgrounds to Knave. Doing so provides two interesting facets that can change up how character creation works and how the game plays out:

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Try This Inventory Slot System for Dungeons & Dragons Today

It’s been a long time since I posted anything to this website, but if you follow me on social I’ve been tied up with two things (gaming related, anyway): creating a customized version of the FASERIP system by way of the OGL, used in the MCU-inspired actual play podcast Let’s Start Over, Shall We?, and gearing up for a megadungeon crawling 5th edition D&D campaign with some old friends to introduce (at least one of) their children to roleplaying games!

It’s that second one that influences today’s post. I’ll be providing a fully detailed — but not yet playtested — inventory slot management system for adventurers. It also takes into account porters/quartermasters, draft animals, and towed storage like wagons and carts. It’s based on 5th Edition for some numbers (like a draft horse’s Strength score, for example), but can be pretty easily ported to any D&D-adjacent or OSR game.

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DeScriptors RPG is Leveling Up

Just a quick but important announcement today as the DeScriptors RPG has launched its own website: DeScriptorsRPG.com! Complete with (revised) one-page rules and an extended example of play, the website allows you to reference and play the latest iteration of the DeScriptors RPG rules entirely online.

What is DeScriptors RPG?

For those of you new to the game, it was created by Matthew Bannock and first published as a one-page rule set and implied system in 2015. It has since been expanded with a bevy of optional and variant rules to show its flexibility and multi-genre nature, and has received over a half-dozen sample settings, each one featuring scenario ideas, optional rules and scenes, and pregenerated characters. Fully-fledged fantasy settings and adventures exist in the form of the Dalentown setting’s DeScriptors conversions.

New, Improved & Free to Play!

Already familiar with the diceless word game RPG driven by character arcs? The website features re-written and clarified rules, plus a more heavily commented version of the Example of Play from DeScriptors: Definitive Edition. These clarifications and expansions will find themselves added to revised versions of our digital releases, so if you already own ’em, you’ll get the updates there, too! And if all goes well, you may very well see vastly improved versions coming down the road. We have a lot in store for the future of DeScriptors!

Check out DeScriptorsRPG.com today and share it with your friends because everyone loves a free tabletop role-playing game! Expect much more coming down the road very, very soon.


If you enjoyed this article, please like, comment, and share! Use the widgets to subscribe to get an email as soon as I publish something new, or check out my stuff on itch.io or in my shop, or at DMsGuild and DriveThruRPG. I really appreciate your support.

Happy gaming to ya!

A New House of Horrors Adventure Has Arrived: DD-02 The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor for OSR Games

Out now on DriveThruRPG and itch.io is the long-awaited sequel to DD-01: a brand new house-of-horrors style adventure for OSR games in the vein of OD&D and AD&D 1st edition.

DD-02 The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor

This standalone adventure features the manor house of a noble spellcaster, corrupted by a mysterious influence. The Brightwell family goes insane, subjugating or killing their mercenary guards and servants, and performing all manner of horrific ooze-related experiments. Their ultimate goal: to eventually build an army of slime-infused monstrosities to threaten the nearby settlements!

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