Let’s start from the beginning… what is the primary BBEG in all gaming tables? We all know that is scheduling. So the moment one of your players fails to come to one of the games, you know you will have to get the player up to date on what happened and give an explanation to why they weren’t present during the previous session with the players. What if I told you this could be easily solved?

A plethora of games already use it as the default way to handle sessions, but still, so many of us shy away from it for some reason. Several TV shows (especially cartoons, anime, and sitcoms) are episodic (with one or two chapters every once in a while having a “To be continued…”). Why is it that they did that and why might we want to apply it to our home games?

Episodic Narrative

Similar to a one-shot or a stand-alone movie, episodic chapters in some cartoons, TV series, animes, and more use a format of beginning, climax, and end. They are auto-conclusive, any episode can be seen without having seen the previous one and, in most cases, you should not have any problem understanding the narrative. In the mostly dead era of regular television, people would often just watch whatever was being aired on TV. If the chapter from the TV series being aired was too difficult to follow if you hadn’t seen the rest of it, most people would just change the channel and watch some other thing. In the streaming era we are in right now, that concept is pretty much dead by this point.

But why would we want to do this in our TTRPG sessions? It is a fact that if you end a session on a cliffhanger, not finishing the narrative, people will be excited to come back to the next session. I am not denying that. However, being the adults we are, it may often be difficult to find a good time for us to all be able to meet for one session. When you make your sessions episodic, you can allow for someone to miss a session and there is nothing wrong with it. You can even tie one person not being there into the narrative!

Episode Structure

Episodic structure refers to a narrative composed of loosely connected or self-contained incidents. Essentially, each scene stands alone as a distinct unit, while still contributing to the overall storyline of the work. Episodic structure is often utilized in television shows, where each episode tells a self-contained story while still advancing the larger series plot.
Novlr

Three Acts Narrative Structure

If we structure our sessions in three acts, it will look something like this: the first one is the exposition, where a villager or the mayor of the town gives us a mission to take. Then comes the rising action or climax, in which the characters are sent to investigate a farm that appears to be haunted, only to find out there is a secret lab filled with traps below it. Lastly, for act three we reach the falling action, or finale, when we find evidence that the lab belongs to the town’s police officer’s daughter, and you have to chase her down in an epic chase concluding the story with a final epic fight. Sounds rad, huh?

This format is studied to easily hook the viewer, gamer, or listener, and that’s why we find it across all media. You can use it in all your sessions to achieve great success. However, doing so can lead to railroading the players and needing to do much more preparation. The GM needs to have great management of the flow of pacing in the game to achieve these (see Jennifer’s great article on how to handle time for running games at cons or an old article of mine for guidance on these). Running multiple one-shots can also help you get the hang of it, as one-shots are made to work like a single episode. Lastly, several games facilitate the whole episodic format way better: the Kids on… series of games, Brindlewood Bay, Agon, and Cantrip, just to list a few, excel at this.

The Larger Series Plot

Series that follow an episodic format still usually have an overarching plot going on in the background. Unless it’s something like The Simpsons, or South Park where a character’s death rarely means anything, there usually is a story going on in the background. Supernatural, or Gravity Falls, just to list two episodic series I am watching at the moment of writing this, follow that same format, with the overarching narrative having me come back again and again willing to know what is going on. However, at the same time, I know that if I pass 2 weeks without seeing a chapter I can easily jump back into the narrative without the need for a recap.

Brindlewood Bay has mechanics for the game work exactly like that, with the grandmas solving small cases, but encouraging the GM to have at least 2 details of the big plot happening involving Lovecraftian secrets or conspiracies to be thrown per episode. You can do this with any game if you plan ahead enough, and I can guarantee there is great fun to be had from it, coming from experience. It can also be a fun minigame having the players name the episode at the end of the session.

Conclusion

As stated, episodic narrative has a bunch of benefits, and can be a fun change from the usual style you are used to. Grab a one-shot adventure, tie it into the overall narrative, and get your players to play in a series of self-contained episodes leading to a bigger narrative. You can have a “To be continued…” thrown every once in a while, but as a personal challenge, why not try giving an episodic campaign a chance in your game of choice?

Have you ever run an episodic campaign in your home games? What are your thoughts on it? Do you have any additional pros or cons about them that I didn’t list here? Let me know in the comments below so we can keep the conversation going!

In a similar manner to my articles in which I break down the articles from Arcadia that I used to write for Tribality, I now present you a series of breakdowns for the Unbound collection. Leon Barillaro has been kind enough to provide me with a copy of the issue for me to check out and review.

In many ways, Unbound is very similar to Arcadia and the Uncaged collections. Leon even mentions it in a Letter from the Editor at the very beginning! However, this collection has another purpose. With the disaster caused by the D&D OGL, many people started to check out other games, and the people in charge of Unbound wanted to make other games known. As Leon says “This zine is […] a collection of articles supporting the systems and genres we enjoy, many of which have nothing to do with heroic medieval fantasy”

The PDF itself is not indexed, nor provides alt text for the images. Additionally, the text cannot be selected, as if every page was a whole image. However, the layout is gorgeous to look at, the images selected are amazing, colorful, and thematic. Additionally, each individual article not only includes the author, but also who did the illustrations, the editors, and even playtesters for the adventures. I really liked seeing all the people involved being well displayed in each article, and having a whole Contributors section for each of them (except for the Playtesters). The contributors, I must also stand out, for being extremely diverse, both as BIMPOC, and part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Skip the Pantheon, Build a Tarot Deck

~ Article ~

Author: Dana Floberg
Artists: Cecelia Nesti
Editors: Ashton Duncan and Steffie Devaan

When worldbuilding there are many things we usually start with: a map, politics, the kingdoms or planets, a pantheon… What if there was another better way to start and give you plenty of ideas on the aspects from your world? That’s right! That is a tarot deck! Through this article Dana takes some time to explain the origin of tarot, what it was created to represent, and how much it says about our world. After that, there is a guide on how to create your own tarot deck for your world, and make it impactful in the setting.

I can’t say I know much about tarot. I have my own set that I got at last Big Bad Con just because I bought a game that requires one, and there was a tarot deck that looked incredible next to it. Upon reading this article I got an urge to think of things from my world that would appear in its own personal deck. I definitely recommend this article to get those inspirational gears turning in your head, and creating a tarot deck your players can pull from in all your games!

Fourteen Blades

~ Resource for Thirsty Sword Lesbians ~

Author: Mathew Campbell
Artists: Margarita Bourkova
Editors: Brock Bergum and Leon Barillaro

In this article, you will find a collection of 14 different Blades for the TTRPG Thirsty Sword Lesbians. If there is supposed to be a connection between them and the tarot cards I really can’t find it (they are supposed to be tarot inspired… maybe it has something to do with the minor arcana cards?). However, the content to be found in this article is incredibly imaginative. It shows that Mathew is either a sword nerd or did a bunch of research on different swords, because half of the types of swords detailed here I have never heard of. The Blind Daab Sŏng, dual blades of justice and truth, and Mora’s Shashka, the sword for good witches possessed by a spirit, are surely my favorites.

Let’s Talk About Boiz!!11!1!

~ Adventure for Mork Borg (Cy_Borg) ~

Author: Isla Lader
Artists: David Markiswsky
Editors: Kai Linder and Steffie Devaan

When an AI destined to collect information from thousands of individual’s fashion, and predict the future of it goes rogue and uses bodies constructed with flesh as its way of being corporeal in the world, you have to do something about it. I wouldn’t call this an adventure per se, but a series of imaginative bits of information about this SINdy AI to create your own series of stories around it. SINdy has a connection with the tarot cards in the sense that she (or her followers) can grant powers to the PCs that are defined through a draw from a major arcana deck. I had not seen Cy_Borg adventures before, but I do own a copy of the game. Now I really want to run a short campaign featuring SINdy, or at least having her be a side character!

Divined Chaos

~ A New Game ~

Author: Karren Loomer
Artists: David Markiswsky
Editors: Dana Floberg and Leon Barillaro

I was surprised to encounter a new game in this issue. I mean, the last one did have a hack of Honey Heist, but this one is not based on anything. It is a very simple game using tarot cards and having all players interpret the cards they draw. You may use the actual meanings of the tarot cards, or the art in them to create your story, meaning that if you have a tarot deck surrounding a certain theme (for example, Lovecraftian), it is very probable your story will follow a direction of that sort. I like that this makes the game extremely easy for beginners, and that there are barely any rules to it. It’s 4 steps you need to follow, distributing the cards in a similar way to how you do it for the Fiasco game. Simple, yet a very cool idea for a boring afternoon, or if you are a tarot cards lover.

Final thoughts

I do find a use for all of these articles in particular. Setting up a world with the first article, creating my own set of tarot cards is something I became really interested in trying out. While I have never played Thirsty Sword Lesbians, I plan to do so someday, and still I find it very easy to adapt the swords from the second article to any other game of my choosing, as swords with lore are always cool. The Cy_Borg article awakened a need to finally play the game instead of only check out its art, which is always great to have, and I really want to roleplay SINdy. Lastly, for Divine Chaos, while I don’t think it is the kind of game I like to play, I believe it is simple enough to be able to be played with any non-TTRPG player. All in all, a very useful issue, with an extremely cool theme!

GET UNBOUND ISSUE 3 FROM DRIVETHRURPG

Be sure to leave them a rating if you get the product to help it grow and allow them to release more issues!

I got a Thursday review copy while getting ready for my Time Traveling Panel for Big Bad Con 2023 with Sebastian Yūe. Thursday served as a brilliant piece to explore how one can run a Time Traveling game on the TTRPG space, specifically Time Loops. In exchange for Eli Seitz’s game, I promised to make a review of it. Here you have it. Check out Eli’s other stuff by going to his Itch Page.

A bit more about Thursday

What a concept, right? Hehe. Thursday was created as part of Zinequest 2021 and had its own Kickstarter page campaign managing to get 358 backers breaking all stretch goals, and getting $6042 on its February run. The game includes a “Director’s Commentary” in which Eli explains the process behind the design of the game, and behind the scenes.

The system

Thursday is based on the No Dice No Masters system created by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum, which excels at character driven collaborative storytelling. As the name implies, No Dice No Masters does not have a single game master, instead splitting the responsibilities among all players and alleviating the need for planning. Thursday uses a modified version of this framework to tell a fulfilling story in a single play session of fewer than three hours.

While reading the rules for Thursday I noticed that the game does not rely on that many rules. In fact, after you have set up the game (that you can do in about 15 minutes, which I find great), it is mostly an improvisational game with only the character sheets, with the Strong, Regular, and Weak Moves integrated into it. Lastly, you have the Setting Elements, which are what will be carrying the game forward.

I have not played many games of this kind, so what I find it easy to compare to is Fiasco. This is because both games are used to tell a story that goes wilder as you move scene by scene (in this case, through different loops). Additionally, both games offer you the structure of how the scenes can start, but it’s upon the players to improvise and play through what actually happens, making every playthrough unique.

The Mechanics

Being a 2-4 person game with no GM, the game comes with 4 playbooks you can choose from to play:

• The creative Artiste who allows their feelings to overflow and explode.
• The pragmatic Sellout who is willing to choose society’s norms over their true feelings.
• The isolated Misanthrope who is bound to follow routine above all else.
• The confident Trendsetter who is always at risk to turn to substances for solace and attempt something foolish.

Each of them comes with set objectives you can choose from, as well as a vibe, that will place you in your character shoes’ swiftly. Additionally, they all have their own set of Strong, Regular, and Weak Moves.

The Moves

The Moves in this game point you to the stuff you should be doing as you play. They are vague enough so you can apply them to infinite circumstances. Regular Moves are the stuff you will be doing most of the time, as these have no cost whatsoever, which also forces you to act more as the playbook you chose. Weak Moves, on the other hand, take into consideration your playbook to put your character in a difficult situation, OR EVEN DIE. Yeah, dying is normal in this game (we’ll talk about that in a bit). When you do a Weak Move you get a token. You can use those tokens to be able to use Strong Moves. These moves get the character going in the right direction to fulfill their goal, and become a better person.

By using this token mechanic with the Weak, Regular and Strong Moves, the game forces the player to play the stereotype of the playbook. If they want to win the game, they need to learn their lesson, which is done through Strong Moves. In order to be able to use those, they have to get through hardships, meaning the player has to use Weak Moves. I really like the simplicity behind this system that takes your hand and guides you to creating a story that works great with the premise of the game. Really smart!

Setting Elements

But what about the rest of the world when there is no GM? That’s when the Setting Elements come into play. Each of the players (when it’s 4 of them) take the role of one of the Setting Elements. When played with 2-3 players, the game suggests alternative ways to handle the Setting Elements. These are:

• The Loop controls the time travel weirdness and informs pacing.
• The City controls locations and informs the sense of place.
• The Home Team controls friendly side characters.
• The Away Team controls antagonistic side characters.

By having control of these elements, everyone has a responsibility during the course of the game, akin to dividing the tasks of a GM among all players. They all include Moves to keep the story constantly moving when it’s starting to slow down.

The Setting Elements grant everything you need to replace a GM. Being a collaborative game, there are no secrets to hide from each other, and everyone is responsible for creating a cool story. These elements are just a way to make that as a mechanic.

The PDF

The downloadable PDF is simple, with white backgrounds and readable text, making it extremely easy to print. As for accessibility, the PDFs available are tagged, with bookmarks and alt text on them. The art is very elegant, giving that weirdness factor, and vibes that there is something wrong, very artsy. Being a Zine, it is only 36 pages long, even including examples of play to make sure you got the hang of how the game goes. As I said: simple, yet elegant.

Conclusion

Thursday is clearly not the kind of game that goes for all gamers. If you want to roll dice, and delve more into complex mechanics this might not be your jam. However, if you are very into the roleplaying aspect of TTRPGs and love Time Loops as much as I do, then you should totally give this a try. It is a brilliant game with short rules, that works excellent for those days someone misses your weekly game, or if you are looking to run a short campaign of something different to give the GM a break!

The game is also available in physical format through many retailers. Check the link below for more info!

GET THURSDAY ON ITCH

In a similar manner to my articles in which I breakdown the articles from Arcadia that I used to write for Tribality, I now present you a series of breakdowns for the Unbound collection. Leon Barillaro has been kind enough to provide me with a copy of the issue for me to check out and review.

In many ways, Unbound is very similar to Arcadia and the Uncaged collections. Leon even mentions it in a Letter from the Editor at the very beginning! However, this collection has another purpose. With the disaster caused by the D&D OGL, many people started to check out other games, and the people in charge of Unbound wanted to make other games known. As Leon says “This zine is […] a collection of articles supporting the systems and genres we enjoy, many of which have nothing to do with heroic medieval fantasy”

The PDF itself is not indexed, nor provides alt text for the images. Additionally, the text cannot be selected, as if every page was a whole image. However, the layout is gorgeous to look at, the images selected are amazing, colorful, and thematic. Additionally, each individual article not only includes the author, but also who did the illustrations, the editors, and even playtesters for the adventures. I really liked seeing all the people involved being well displayed in each article, and having a whole Contributors section for each of them (except for the Playtesters). The contributors, I must also stand out, for being extremely diverse, both as BIMPOC, and part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Practically Magic

~ Article ~

Author: Margaret Mae
Artists: Kata Kemi
Editors: Dana Floberg and Steffie Devaan

The first article is mostly a way to open your mind to the endless possibilities of magic. We’ve all wanted to get the control remote from the TV that is far away with some telekinetic magic… What if magic was a normal thing in the real world? That’s what this article offers. It’s not a game, nor tips on how to GM, but an exercise for you to worldbuild. The article offers ways in which you could deal with magic in your game to have it become a regular everyday thing, and the things that may cause. While reading this I started to have lots of ideas for a murder mystery case in a world where magic is the norm. Can you imagine all the implications?

Whiskers & Wings

~ Honey Heist Hack~

Author: Dana Floberg
Artists: Angela O’Hara
Editors: Ashton Duncan and Steffie Devaan

Did you ever consider the idea of your cat actually being a dragon polymorphing to have a comfortable life in your house? In this Honey Heist hack, players play as cats in a human house. You have 2 stats: Cat and Dragon. Break vases, or steal the treasures from the house to create your horde…  Roll a bunch of dice to create “Embertongue
Knightsbane, the Emerald Scourge, Lord of the Wastes and Seventh of My Name, also called Muffins.” or similar named characters, and wreak havoc! Having played Honey Heist before I am pretty sure cat lovers are going to absolutely love this hack!

Dracula’s Diner

~ Oops, All Draculas’ Adventure ~

Author: Jessica Marcrum
Artists: Nala J. Wu
Editors: Kai Linder and Leon Barillaro

From the mind of Oops, All Draculas creator comes this hilarious one-shot adventure that is more of a sandbox to play in. Players play as Draculas owning a diner. Select within the Draculas options available, and do your best to keep this diner running as smoothly as possible. A series of introductory questions for the players set the scene, and a list of a mixture of hilarious, loveable, incredibly annoying, and more NPCs coming to eat make sure to keep the game on a good rhythm. The adventure also comes with its own list of minor and major complications that can occur, as well as seeds on how to start the game. I’ve never got to play Oops, All Draculas, nor even have the game… but after reading this, I’m all in for getting a copy and start a Dracula’s diner with my friends!

Minder

~ Blades in the Dark’s Playbook ~

Author: Kai Linder
Artists: Herman Lau
Editors: Brock Burgum and Leon Barillaro

The shields in the dark, these scoundrels focus more on their companions than on the cutthroat world they live in. This playbook includes all the things necessary to get this new character into your BitD game. The minder’s abilities focus more on helping others out, such as helping other scoundrels release stress or heal their trauma, or assisting a teammate without gaining stress yourself. However, where the minder focuses the most is on emotions. They can read people’s emotional states with a glance. To help the GM out, this comes with a table you can roll on to determine an NPC’s emotional state, taking inspiration from Robert Plutchik’s emotion wheel. Lastly, the Playbook comes with a section on how to play the Minder that I really enjoy: This being a character that is always helping others out, it advises the player on not taking the spotlight and leaving others the time to shine as well, not always appearing in all scenes.

In a similar manner to my articles in which I breakdown the articles from Arcadia that I used to write for Tribality, I now present you a series of breakdowns for the Unbound collection. Leon Barillaro has been kind enough to provide me with a copy of the issue for me to check out and review.

In many ways, Unbound is very similar to Arcadia and the Uncaged collections. Leon even mentions it in a Letter from the Editor at the very beginning! However, this collection has another purpose. With the disaster caused by the D&D OGL, many people started to check out other games, and the people in charge of Unbound wanted to make other games known. As Leon says “This zine is […] a collection of articles supporting the systems and genres we enjoy, many of which have nothing to do with heroic medieval fantasy”

The PDF itself is not indexed, nor provides alt text for the images. Additionally, the text cannot be selected, as if every page was a whole image. However, the layout is gorgeous to look at, the images selected are amazing, colorful, and thematic. Additionally, each individual article not only includes the author, but also who did the illustrations, the editors, and even playtesters for the adventures. I really liked seeing all the people involved being well displayed in each article, and having a whole Contributors section for each of them (except for the Playtesters). The contributors, I must also stand out, for being extremely diverse, both as BIMPOC, and part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Delicious Breadcrumbs

~ Article ~

Author: Cat Evans
Artists: Elaine Ho
Editors: Dana Floberg and Steffie Devaan

Sweater Weather

~ Brindlewood Bay Mystery~

Author: Margaret Mae
Artists: Nala J. Wu
Editors: Brock Bergum and Steffie Devaan

A rural fiber festival appears in town, and a murder was commited. It is up for the great Mystery Mavens to solve the case! Just by reading a bit of the premise I was already having a ton of fun. Players get to describe which special handcrafter item they brought to the festival and can even do a minigame of creating an NPS (non playable sheep) that can be involved somehow with the case. The organizer of the event doesn’t want everyone to be scared there was a murder, so they ask the Mavens to solve it fast and without causing a ruckus. I just love how Brindlewood Bay’s mysteries are short and give you plenty of clues and content to create a whole murder mystery. With 9 detailed suspects, 6 important locations, and 20 whole clues, you have more than enough to have a whole session of fun with the Mavens! On top of that, there are 6 Void Clues to tie the mystery to the bigger narrative, each of them extremely creepy, such as “The eye of all locals briefly appear to be goat eyes (sideway pupils)”

Fading Into Fog

~ System Neutral Adventure ~

Author: Alex Neiderberger
Artists: David Markiwsky
Editors: Kai Linder and Leon Barillaro

This system neutral adventure provides a setting that could perfectly work in either a realistic or fantastic setting as long as they allow for weird occult, and ghostly activities to occur. The PCs arrive to this village to find a man is being accused of murder. The village constable is trying to protect him, and asks the player to investigate for her. Some weird happenings are occurring as a ghost of a villager is appearing in town, and the lighthouse appears to be haunted. Explore the village to find clues that may help the accused, proving his possible innocence. As you do, hauntings will constantly be occurring. This causes the crowd from town to be terrified and riot, looking to kill the accused in order to put the ghost to rest. The fear from the villagers uses a special mechanic that can grow or decrease depending on the clues the PCs present to them. If the players waste too much time, or don’t provide enough clues to prove the accused’s innocents, the PCs will have to face the crowd, or the accused dies. There are several possible endings for this case, making it excellent for a GM to run it with multiple groups to see what they do different and what ends up happening by the end!

One extra thing I wanted to point out is that the adventure does a great job at helping the GM understand what they have to do with the clues. There are several clues in the adventure. A table shows how if you connect clues A and B you will find out X, and if you combine clues A and C you will find out Y. This table is an amazing addition that I would love seeing in many other investigation games.

Chasing Yellow

~ Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying System Adventure ~

Author: Arnout Brokking
Artists: Kata Kemi
Editors: Ashton Duncan and Leon Barillaro

Chasing Yellow is a fantastic mystery that I can’t wait to run. It is created to be a duet adventure (1 GM, 1 player), but there is not much stopping you from running it with more players. Without spoiling, the case involves you, the reporter of a newspaper, investigating the case of Phillippe Villeneuve, a cyclist who was supposed to run the Tour the France, but mysteriously died beforehand. The case occurs in the present day, but has fantastical elements to it, in a similar manner to a story from DC’s Constantine. I’m surprised by how much this adventure feels like a real case. It is incredibly humane, and there is tons of people that can help you or make your life extremely difficult. With handouts, a Dramatis Personae filled with NPCs, locations, and even possible people you can contact if you want some extra (not needed but might help the case) information, the adventure has everything for what I assume must be 2-3 sessions of a duet intriguing and suspenseful mystery. It helps that at the very beginning it comes with a Content Warning section describing possible triggers.

That moment comes back again, at the end of one campaign. Maybe you have been playing the same characters for 5 whole years. Perhaps it’s time for a player to jump into the GM seat to give the previous one a breather. Everyone gets ready and starts to think of character concepts. Nevertheless, possibly one of the most important decisions comes into play now. How long do we want our next campaign to be?

We all have faced this moment, and many don’t put that much thought into it. However, having run and finished 3 long campaigns (even though 2 of them ended abruptly), I think I have got a good understanding of the pros and cons of each of the two “modes of play”. Here, in this article, I will detail the reasons why I believe it is always best to state this in a session 0, and which you should decide considering your playstyle. I will be leaning more toward why I have lately preferred shorter campaigns over long ones, but at the end of the day, it mostly depends on what the whole group wants.

The definition of short

How long do I mean when I say a “short” or a “long” campaign? That is extremely variable, and I believe that depends on the kind of game you wish to have. Personally, I believe that the ideal length so that your campaign does not feel very much “on rails” while not feeling long either is to have it last 3-6 months (12-24 sessions). I call anything over 6 months a long campaign. This may change depending on your perspective of the matter, of course.

Most games are specialized for a certain campaign duration. For that very reason, be sure to study that before you decide on running a new game. You can always break the rules a bit and do your own thing, but it does not always offer the best results. A great example is what happened to me when trying to make the game Kids on Brooms run for too long. It’s like trying to eat a lasagna with your bare hands. You can do it, and it might be good, but it won’t offer the best results and will have you work harder for it.

A special focus on the story

Short campaigns allow you to run more story-focused games. Does this mean that characters may not have as much of a spotlight? Not always. When running short campaigns, I usually tell my players that there is a high chance that their character backstories won’t be fully explored. However, if I can get to tie them to the overall narrative of the campaign, then they may get to see more than expected. There’s always the possibility of running another short campaign and having the same characters appear in case the players want to keep using them. So, in a way, shorter campaigns can work as seasons from a TV series. If you are ok with where it ended, then further seasons are canceled. If not, you can make it go as long as the Simpsons.

Just like when you are working and have a deadline you need to meet, restricting yourself to a shorter campaign can help you manage the pacing in a better way. You set from the beginning of the session which things you want to happen. Players can fool around as much as they want, but the story will come and stomp them when they least realize it. With enough experience as a GM, you can have these events flow naturally into the narrative. That way, it becomes easier to create a strong beginning, middle point, and end. Personally, I have had an easier time making the story feel more impactful when it transpires over a shorter period of time. Otherwise, players tend to forget things, making big reveals not feel as great as they could be. As always, this highly depends on your players and the kind of story that you are running.

I tend to think of short campaigns as TV series seasons, or as movies. If you are running a game about detectives, the whole campaign could be one big case that they have to unravel. That shouldn’t take too long. Now, if you want to have that mystery tied to a mafia that is running illicit activities all around the world, you can decide to expand that campaign.

World Exploration

Short campaigns aren’t always the best for world exploration… Or are they? That mostly depends on the size of your “world”, and the game you are running. A medieval epic fantasy tale using D&D5e might explore a whole continent and take years and years to run that campaign. Now, if your game world is just the city of New York, it isn’t that difficult to imagine a short sandbox campaign set there.

For my open-world city heist campaign in which the characters had to leave a message to a tyrant governor at her big birthday party, they were given free rein to explore the whole city and decide on what they wanted to do to leave a message or infiltrate the party. The campaign lasted 4 months, and they were able to explore their characters, multiple NPCs, and the whole city. All in all, it is entirely possible to run a campaign that is all about exploring a location depending on the scope of your game.

How does it affect the players?

When deciding whether you want to run a short or long campaign, your players should heavily affect your decision. First and foremost, you should ask them which sort of campaign they prefer. Then, take into consideration player commitment as well. Players who have too many responsibilities may have a harder time arriving on time, or even making the sessions. Sometimes they can make time just for a short campaign.

If the game is too complex, like games that are crunchy in rules such as D&D or Pathfinder, consider running a short campaign instead of a long one for new players. Once they start to get how the game works, consider running a longer one if you like. Or maybe just create another short one. These sorts of campaigns can also be great if you are looking to make more challenging encounters for the players, as running a long campaign that is also challenging can become too taxing both for the players, as well as for the GM who has to plan all the encounters.

 Conclusion

At the end of the day, whether you decide to run a long or short campaign is something very personal that you must determine with your players, and is heavily tied to the game you decide to run. While I do enjoy more story-focused campaigns that are strong from start to finish and don’t last long to create a bigger impact, you might prefer campaigns that take ages to finish, with a complex storyline that takes its time to unravel, and that’s totally perfect as well!

Now let me know, which kinds of campaigns do you enjoy running the most? What about the campaigns you enjoy playing the most? Write it all down in the comments below!

All images were taken from the PLANET FIST game

A few days ago I got to try out PLANET FIST, a game inspired by sci-fi movies and videogames, especially Planetside 2. In this game by Jess Levine players embody a squad with a suicide mission, owned by one of the huge mega-corporations/factions, each with an extremely different feel to them. The twist is that these soldiers when killed are brought back to life with all their memories to launch themselves into battle again, on an eternal war.

A brief idea of what PLANET FIST actually is

 Every hour of every day on Sixaura, the soldiers of each empire are killed and reborn in an endless loop. Their dead bodies derezz, the bonds between their nanos dissolving—just in time to be reassembled elsewhere, fresh with the memory of death and ready to kill once again. These clone commandos do not die and do not rest. They are duplicated forever, frozen in the same unchanging unaging body. This is the only life they know. It is a meatgrinder without meat—a bloodbath without blood. And it is also, soldier, your life.

In PLANET FIST you should control your character like a stolen car, going full speed, and launching yourself into danger while trying to avoid as much damage as possible, without getting noticed (optional). The fact that your character will always get brought back to life allows you to go as recklessly as you like, either succeeding spectacularly or exploding like firework lights into thousands of tiny meat and bones pieces. You can always try again if needed. Just know that your enemies will be coming back as well.

PLANET FIST is a Powered by the Apocalypse narrative wargame of satirical sci-fi skirmish storytelling and an independent total conversion hack of CLAYMORE’s FIST, and winner of the SUBSTANCE award in the FIST: Ultra Jam.

Layout

The rules’ layout feels very much like a sci-fi instruction manual with pieces of metal and blueprints everywhere. Many sci-fi RPGs decide to go with a similar vibe, but something this rulebook adds on top of that is the Admiral’s Notes dispersed throughout the whole book. Again, these sorts of notes left by a random person from around the world are nothing new, but I believe these in particular do a fantastic job of setting you in the kind of universe you’ll be playing in. By making the book feel like an instruction manual, and having the Admiral’s notes, it very much feels as if you were doing the training to become a soldier through the character creation, with the Admiral shouting at you to pay attention to some sections.

Factions

You can choose between three huge factions to be a squad in, each of them terrible in unique ways:

• The New Committee are hyper capitalists that worry about having tons of money and workers. Their soldiers may not have the best weapons technology-wise, but they surely are the most expensive in the market!
• The Tyrat can only exist through constant war, and their whole motto is that if you want to have everything working as it should you should sacrifice everything for the cause, to have a home to return to after everything is over. Just don’t pay much attention to the fact that everything surrounding the faction only works while wars exist.
• Velian Ascendancy has their soldiers believe that bodies are useless without implants. So we are going to add some to you. These will make you perfect killing machines. Having blades for arms is definitely a life changing experience for the better, doesn’t matter if you can’t do anything but kill with them, right?

Customization and crunch

While this game has a plethora of customization options for your characters, they don’t feel daunting at all, but actually allow each game to feel entirely different. By selecting your faction, you gain access to customization options only available to that specific faction, tying in your characters to the narrative behind how the faction usually behaves or equips their soldiers. You can either roll randomly for which one you get if you like the fun of not knowing what you get or want to go for a quick game, or take the time to choose the one you find the most fun.

At the same time, all characters choose a class trait that works similarly to your usual archetypes or character classes. The fun part of these is that every time you rez you can change your class trait, allowing you to prepare to your mission at hand in the best possible way.

PLANET FIST uses the FIST system, which is Powered by the Apocalypse, meaning the game is story-heavy and doesn’t involve a lot of crunch or mechanics like D&D, Pathfinder, or Gurps. The game is 60 pages long (at least so far), and It decides to add a few more elements to the FIST system, like hit points and a shield meter, to give both a futuristic feel, and show the player how easy you can die in the game. Your character is disposable after all.

The missions

The game has you participate in missions, usually auto-conclusive. This makes it a perfect game for when you want to run a one-shot or a short campaign with a series of separate missions. For that same reason, even though I can imagine some sort of long campaign, I don’t think the system might be the best for those.

From what I see in the rules, the game gives you everything to run missions in which you have to infiltrate or raid an enemy base, and take “Sync Points”. Think of them as those points you have to hold on videogames to take control and win matches in games like Overwatch for example. The problem is, just like in videogames, that even though if you die your character is brought back, enemies are rezzed back as well!

A little bit of what you can expect from the game

I was lucky enough to get to try PLANET FIST with the game designer as the GM. Jess did an amazing job guiding us through the character creation process, which is intended to be done collaboratively with the other players, as you get to choose things like relationships with other players. This allows you to create excellent satires for what would otherwise be a very depressing game, and that is by design! Our squad was composed of the 1st Lt Honey “Sugar Butt” Bi, Cayp “Cowboy” Bara, and Nutella “Dumpsterfire” Raccoon, from the Velian Ascendency faction.  Sugar Butt was Cowboy’s ex, and Dumpsterfire’s rival, while at the same time Cowboy and Dumpsterfire love daring each other to do dangerous stuff, so you can imagine how that went on.

Our team was led by “Commander Sunshine Sparkles”, who assigned our characters the mission, and kept calling the squad to give positive comments and cheer us on. We managed to get the sync point from the enemy base, explode walls, and of course explode enemy bodies in the most absurd ways possible. We rolled excellently enough that our characters never died, which is something that usually happens frequently, so I can’t talk much about how the rezzing works except what I read in the rules.  Finally, after all that shooting, careful planning that we didn’t follow, and explosions, we managed to escape in the Panther, our armed vehicle. I can imagine if we had more time there could have been a chase sequence in vehicles while shooting each other, as this is just THAT type of game.

I was lucky enough to get to play with Dusty and Aki as my other squad members. They (along with 14 other players) will be taking part in the West Marches campaign run by Jess tentatively set to release in January 2024 in podcast form. Within the crew, you’ll be able to find award-winning actual play podcasters like Jeff Stormer of Party of One, Dillin Apelyan (a.k.a. Superdillin) and Noordin Ali Kadir of The Atomless, Kendo of Tales Yet Told, and many more. Find out more about that over here.

Conclusion

PLANET FIST is an action-heavy, satirical take on a terrible world of people who know of no other life than being a soldier forever. If you like sci-fi, dystopian futures, and like this sort of videogame feel this game can offer you without any repercussion if you launch yourself towards danger and die gloriously, then make sure to back this game!

The game offers:

• 60 page 8.5”x11” B&W rulebook
• A unique system of death and reassembly, allowing you to throw your character into the grinder, and catapult them back to the battlefield next turn
• A narratively flexible combat system that reserves room for storytelling and does not require rulers or a grid
• 18 FACTION TRAITS, 12 CHARACTER TRAITS, 12 ROLES, and 12 BONDS all with unique flavor, equipment, and other perks to choose from or roll randomly
• A prewritten example MISSION and an original BATTLEMAP
• 12 THREATS, each with their own stat blocks and unique abilities
• Tables for PROCEDURALLY GENERATED MISSIONS & MISSION REWARDS

Jess’ game is being crowdfunded at the moment via Itch and you can get it right now on sale for just $8 until the end of November. There are still some stretch goals to hit, so make sure to give it a look and help make it the best possible game with your support by CLICKING HERE! Just let them know Nutella Raccoon sent you!

All images were taken from the Forgery game

Among the many indie games and zines that came out in Zine Month there was Forgery. This is a solo journaling experience that has you painting a cursed painting while creating a story, created by Banana Chan, and with a small team behind her. I’ve always really digged the vibe of everything Banana creates, so I was pumped to try this game out. I backed it, and it is only just now that I’ve got the chance to play it. Let me tell you… It’s quite different from other things I’ve tried.

A brief idea of what Forgery actually is

In Forgery, you put yourself in the shoes of Tempest, a girl who’s struggling as a freelance artist in the city of New York. Everyone told you to follow other easier lifestyles, but this is your dream, and you are going to do your best at it. How is it going, though? Poorly. That is until you get a commission to copy a creepy painting of a fiendish creature. You still don’t know it, but that painting is cursed, and things are going to get weird pretty quickly.

Similarly to Choose Your Own Adventure stories, you have to read the zine page by page, jumping from one chapter to another whenever you make a decision. However, there are prompts that constantly appear throughout the text to allow the player to indicate Tempest’s thoughts, responses, and to add depth to her backstory. Then, once Tempest receives the painting commission, you’ll have to paint the cursed painting following a set of instructions. No dice, no character sheet, no cards. Only the rules, a journal, the demonic drawing, and something to paint it with.

The Story

I can’t talk about Forgery without putting emphasis on the story being told. The story itself isn’t that different from other tales we have already seen or heard before. However, Forgery goes a step further and makes it not only very adult but heavily emotional as well. In fact, it is so good Carlos Cisco wrote a whole script to possibly create a movie out of this. In many moments during the game, I would feel as if I was playing a Telltale or Life is Strange game. There is a set story to tell, but the decisions you take might allow you to encounter substories that are happening as you play. In the end, like in these sort of stories, you always end up moving along a straight route. You may come and go, but the result leads you to the same focal decisions in the story. Does this mean the game doesn’t allow much freedom? Mmmm… Actually, even though the story being told is similar on every playthrough, the ramifications you choose and the responses to the prompts you give make no two runs alike.

I do believe that what truly makes the story stand on its own and feel really emotional is not only the great writing, but also the prompts. The story puts the character you are roleplaying into all kinds of situations, and in those moments, it may ask you how you react, or what is going through your mind at the moment. Every single time I had to write these what I wrote ended up heavily influencing my later decisions in the story. That makes it much more interactive than a Choose Your Own Adventure book, pretty much at the same level as the story based videogames I named before, maybe even more. It may not end in a whole plethora of different finales like Choose Your Own Adventure books, but still, the story got me hooked til the end. Nevertheless, I don’t think I would replay the game but would love to hear which paths other people took and how their own stories went. The story must have taken me 6 hours to complete from start to finish, but I am a slow reader and don’t paint really fast either, so take that into consideration.

The Painting

The selling point of the game is the fact that it is not only the protagonist who is painting, but you as the player are also doing it. I didn’t know how much this was going to work for me, but I was astonished to see how much more immersive it made the game. The game comes with the lineart of the painting already done, and it has numbers all over the place so you know what you have to paint at each moment in the story. You can see the drawing below. At certain moments in the story, you will be asked what is going through your mind at the moment and choose from 3 predefined options. One choice is symbolized with warm colors, another one with neutral ones, and lastly, cold colors. Once you have chosen, you must paint all sections in the drawing with the indicated number using only colors from the choice you made. That choice will affect the narrative going forward.

What’s really important about the painting mechanic is how it tells you to do it. First of all, I’ve got to say that I love that one of the very first things you paint in the fiendish creature is the eyes. I could feel as if they were constantly looking at me while I painted them. Secondly, every time the game asks you to paint, it tells you to continue thinking about the decision you chose about how you feel all the time. There were some tough decisions I took, and having a whirlwind of those negative thoughts as I painted hurts. There’s something zen-like when painting that makes it easier for these feelings to get to you easily. The fact that you are always painting with a color associated with the feeling makes it extra powerful. Warm colors are usually tied with strong emotions, and cold ones with sad feelings. One of my last decisions was a depressing one, and the fact that I had to keep thinking about my decision while I painted, and I was using cold colors for that made it feel like a gut punch. If there is one thing I would criticize about this, however, is that at times I felt like I was taking very long to carry on one same feeling or decision in my mind because I had to paint a bunch of things.

You can check my resulting art piece by clicking on the link [HERE]. It may be spoilerish, but not really. Just in case, you are free to enter and see the final disturbing result if you like.

Art & Layout

This is a game about the player playing an artist, and painting, so of course the art needed to be good. There is an art piece at the beginning of every chapter, all creepy or disturbing in some way. They don’t affect the narrative or the game in any way but help grow this feeling of uneasiness in the player, which is what the game is mostly about. As for the layout, the game went with a simplistic route. All pages are flat colors with text on top. The text can be found in many colors, and sometimes even bold, all of these variations to indicate the player must do something, as explained at the beginning of the game.

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Conclusion

I’ve never thought a game about painting could affect me this much. At the same time, I got to read a really entertaining story with awesome characters (love you Cody and Kara <3). It was definitely an unforgettable experience and something that definitely makes me excited to see what Banana will make next! If you do enjoy horror, or are looking for something out of the norm, then you should definitely check out Forgery!

GET THE GAME THIS NEXT SPOOKY SEASON HERE

Last week, my year-and-a-half campaign I ran of Kids on Brooms was brought to an end. However, despite the campaign being over, the story was not. I decided to bring it to an end before we came to a conclusion to the story. We all probably have campaigns we were a part of that ended abruptly. Let’s talk a bit about it so we can all see and share where it is they go or can go wrong.

Making it too long

After running 4 campaigns as a GM, some short, some long, I’ve started to think that I do better at GMing campaigns that go as long as 1-1.5 years. This is usually different for every GM. However, if I go on with my game for too long, you might need to turn into the guy from the meme with the whiteboard connecting all the plots. In my first 5+ year campaign I actually had a player who did something like that and had a ton of fun connecting all the details, but not every player wants to go to that length, and that’s ok. Then, I got to run 5e’s Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for a year and a half and it went excellently. A shorter 4-month-long one didn’t end up being as good as expected, but everything tied in nicely by the end as well. Lastly, we come to this last campaign, which was supposed to be about 6 months long but turned into a 2-year-long campaign that I couldn’t finish.

How can you know which type of campaign might suit you best? There are prewritten campaign modules, or you can run your own thing. This will not only depend on you but also on the players you are with. Even if you like creating long campaigns, your players may not be up for that. This is why it is so important to set expectations from the very beginning in a session 0. I always say that the best way to get good at GMing is GMing, and getting to understand better your GMing style can only be done that way. So, try it all, if possible. Run long campaigns, campaign modules, short campaigns, one-shots…

But how was it that making the campaign too long affected my games? I like to create complex characters, with their own objectives. If the PCs don’t decide to interact with a character or get to know them better, the NPCs will keep doing their stuff, creating more mysteries or unknown stuff. On a short campaign with about 10-15 important NPCs that’s not that big of a deal. However, if the campaign goes for too long there may be 40+ things going on behind the scenes, and that not only is frustrating for the players, but also for the GM (me) to conclude the story by tying up the loose ends. Frustration from each of the two sides of the screen can quickly kill a campaign.

I was not lying when I said that 5+ years campaign was complex. Props to my player who was such a fan of the game he decided to build this to explain his theories to the others.

Scheduling

I am pretty sure you all expected this to be here: TTRPGs greatest BBEG. One of the reasons why my last game and many others failed,  is due to scheduling. Once we become adults, we all have thousands of things we have to do, so finding one single moment 4+ people can meet is extremely tough to accomplish. In my case, due to job changes, college life, and things in life, it was difficult to set a specific moment, and not change it. Add in the campaign length, and maybe a time that was comfortable for everyone becomes one where 1 or 2 can’t make it most weeks after the first year. Luckily for you, we gnomes here at the Gnome Stew did a whole Gnomecast episode full of tips and ways in which you can solve scheduling issues, or what has worked for us. Check it out RIGHT HERE or on your Podcast app of choice.

In addition to all the problems scheduling can cause us when finding a day to play, there’s also the fact that people may arrive tired after a full day of work. The fact that they decide to go to the game nonetheless even if they are beaten up is great and speaks greatly of how eager they are to play. However, a tired person might not be able to be as focused on the game, or willing to go through some moments in the game as others. We need to keep this in mind when scheduling, as it can play a part in the campaign’s demise. If possible, try to find a moment in which everyone can play and be well-rested.

Pacing

Something I have been noticing quite a bit is that mixed in with all the tension, horror, intrigue, mystery, etc. quite a bit of fuc*ery goes on at my tables. I love to allow players to throw in jokes as it can release tension in serious moments, and make the game more fun after a tiresome day. Nevertheless, one has to be a bit restrictive with this, as it can easily break the pacing of the game. If you are already playing late because you all struggled to find a good time to play, having bad pacing makes players not be as hooked to the campaign as they could be. In addition to this, I struggle to keep the pacing of the game, causing some games to feel like a thousand things happened, and others like the players only did one or two things. Unfortunately, again, the only way to get better at that is by practicing and making mistakes. One book I’ve seen often recommended for those who struggle with pacing in their games is Hamlet’s Hit Points by Robin D. Laws. I haven’t got to read it yet, but I am planning to.

One other way you can get better at pacing is by listening to your players. I am always open with my players that if they are uncomfortable or believe something could have gone better they can always talk with me about it. This not only has helped me better understand my players’ playstyles, but also how much time they are comfortable with certain moments in the game lasting. Some may enjoy combat over roleplay, so I always make sure to drop in some action to keep the game moving forward. On the other hand, if others want long and profound RP moments, I need to plan in advance scenes that can create these moments without lasting so long that the player who loves action falls asleep.

Managing Expectations

One other thing my last game suffered from is that expectations weren’t managed extremely well from the beginning. I originally planned to create kind of a Harry Potter experience, but we set the world to be a bit more adult and set in the 60s. I wanted to add a bit of horror once everyone had created their characters and they all agreed. Additionally, we all thought it wasn’t going to take that much longer than 6 months and we planned on it being episodic. The game ended up being about a war between the magic world and the normal humans while the Cold War was going on, so the US and Russian governments were involved, as well as a governmental organization similar to Area 51. In addition to all that,  the game wasn’t episodic and lasted for almost 2 years.  By the end, most of the player characters weren’t too interested in fighting the big bad guy of the campaign.

Since I’ve got to know them, sessions 0 have become essential for me, and what happened to me is exactly why it is that way. Defining expectations from the very beginning, as well as indicating which things shall never appear in the narrative are key to having a successful game. I’ve gone more in depth about how to manage expectations for your games in a past article. Be sure to check it out!

Choosing the appropriate game for the campaign

One last aspect when looking to run a game is making sure the game system is made for the story you are trying to tell and play. Again, by managing and setting expectations from the very beginning, and depending on how long you want the sessions and campaign to be there are several games that might apply. However, systems like Blades in the Dark should not be your first choice if you are looking to run a slice of life style of game, just like D&D or Pathfinder might not be the best choice for a college life campaign. In my case, Kids on Brooms doesn’t have a progression system as robust as other games, and there isn’t a predefined setting either. That made the system quite difficult to handle when things started getting out of hand and many magic duels began to appear.

If you don’t have a setting already thought out from the beginning, the session 0 might be the best time to do a bit of research and find the best one for what you want to play.  Ask in forums or discord servers if necessary, and you will surely find the perfect game for the story you all want to create. If not, you can always create a story around the game all players want to play and know the rules of.

Closing off a Game

No roleplaying game should make the players or GM have a bad time. Sometimes you are all moving forward trying to conclude a tale, but is it actually worth it? It’s not wrong to put a stop or a pause to a game that isn’t doing it for you. There’s always the possibility of one of the players running another campaign everyone is excited about to give the GM a rest. Who knows? Maybe you can finish that campaign later when everyone is eager to return to their characters. Burnout is always a thing that can happen!

Killing a campaign might not be easy for everyone, so it is always a good idea to communicate it gently and create a space for everyone to talk about it if needed. Frustration, sadness, or even anger might arise, but if it really is the best for everyone they will come to understand. At the end of the day, it is always better to remember the campaign for all the great fun it once brought.

All images were taken from the O’ Captain game

After catching a glimpse of Leon Barillaro and Scott Bullock’s game last Big Bad Con I was astounded by the huge amount of dice it seemed to require to play it. I mean, any game that allows me to use most of my dice arsenal will always be well-received, but how complex could it be? Leon informed me it was a solo journaling game in which you told the story of a sailor/pirate by creating constellations.  I love pirate stories, as well as astronomy, so I was immediately hooked!

I backed Leon’s and Scott’s game as soon as it came out on Crowdfundr. Even though I saw it in Big Bad Con, I didn’t get the chance to try it, and people were speaking really well of it. Now that I have my digital copy, I’ll tell you all about my initial thoughts on it after trying it out.

A brief idea of what O’ Captain actually is

Just like with any journaling game (check out my journaling game by clicking here!) O’Captain will be spent mostly writing in your journal, be it a Word document, or a piece of paper written in ink at candlelight while ocean sounds play in the background. The other half of the game is spent rolling dice and interpreting them in the same way you do with constellations in the sky.

One of the coolest mechanics of the game is that it does really matter where your dice land when you roll them. You need to link the dice forming constellations. If you can’t form any with your dice roll, your story ends. The tough part is that the constellations are already pre-defined, meaning you have a collection of possible constellations you have to try to make. You sum the numbers on the dice that conform to it and check the corresponding question in a table from that constellation that is linked to that number. That’s the event that transpired in your story. You have to detail it and continue your journal.

Layout

Something I need to prase is the layout of the game. The art may be simple, but the layout is gorgeous. The pieces on the side, even though they are repeated all along the zine, make it extremely stylish. Additionally, the way it is all set up makes it simple to quickly find anything you might be looking for at all times, causing the jumping between pages to be much easier than expected. Trust me, you will be a lot of jumping between pages. I can only imagine that it must be even better in physical format.

Mechanics

Stars, Setbacks, Assets, and Titles

Each of these 4 things work as your resources along the game. Stars are the d6s you have to roll to create constellations and clusters, adding the numbers up to find the resulting prompts in the tables. Setbacks are d4s that decrement that number and you need to get rid of. Assets, on the other hand, are d8s that you can decide to expend whenever you want to increment the number you rolled. Lastly, your captain Titles work just like assets, except these are d10 and you can expend them once per voyage.

These resources change after each roll as you keep answering prompts and building your story as a captain. Some prompts even allow you to choose between losing X stars OR Y assets, or other similar decisions. This way, you need to strategically decide when to use each of your resources. Selecting the appropriate angle to throw the dice in the dice tray can be handy as well.

This game is going to be using plenty of dice. For instance, you need at least 8 d6s to play, as there are the dice you will always be rolling. This means that if you are the sort of person who lives with only one dice set, this game might not be for you (unless you decide to roll virtually). I do highly recommend having a dice tray for this as well, so you don’t risk having dice fly everywhere when you roll 10+ of them at once.

Clusters and Constellations

The game’s core mechanic. On each dice pool roll, you need to make either a cluster or a constellation. Clusters are easier to make, consisting of only 3 or 4 stars, meaning these are the ones that you will be making at the beginning. As constellations are much more difficult to accomplish and require more stars, ranging from 5 to 9 of them, these appear far less often during the game. Therefore, the game creates through its mechanics constant story beats for your tale, having small events transpire through clusters that are interrupted by the end of the story arc in the form of a constellation.

At times, your dice pool may not allow you to create any sort of cluster, or constellation. That’s when the modifying stars’ positions mechanic comes into play! You are allowed to move the dice, but doing so will change the die result, causing a lower dice roll result. As you keep progressing through the game you will be forced to reposition dice, lowering your dice result, thus causing you to have prompts that negatively impact your story as a captain. You need to find a middle ground and select the cluster, or constellation you want to create strategically. I’ve found that aspect of the game incredibly entertaining. Continue this until your captain’s retirement, or inevitable downfall in glory.

The Star Chart, showing most of the clusters and constellations. I love how this is shown to the player in a way to easily see them all within a glance

Conclusion

O’Captain is an excellent system to tell your pirate or sailor tale. While it is a solo journaling game, it recommends playing with one other person to bounce ideas with and giving the best results to the prompt. The story of my captain Smelly Will might have been a short-lived one, but it was filled with backstabbing and impacting discoveries while it lasted. The game mechanic is unlike any other I’ve ever seen, making me want to give this game many more tries until I get to create a legendary pirate! What’s more, trying to find constellations amidst the plethora of dice is far more fun than I anticipated! Be sure to keep this game on your radar, if not try it out, and/or get it if possible!

GET THE GAME IN ITCH