A Pair of Failed Careers

Into the Odd is my one-shot game of choice. It has just enough of everything. Just enough mechanics, just enough character, just enough world. I understand where Electric Bastionland is coming from, but it's always seemed like the "just a little too much" counterpart for my purposes. That said, the Failed Careers are elegant little thought-forms, similar to Troika! backgrounds, and I had some fun putting these two on paper. With some quick wombo.art (I'm a little meh on it, but it works), they're ready to go.

Courier

You took things places.

Sample Names
Major, Fries, Tate, Owney

You Get
Uniform, Letter Opener (d6, concealable)

Cash	What stopped you?
£1	Snow. Take a heavy down coat (Armor 1, Bulky).
£2	Rain. Take rubberized boots.
£3	Heat. Take a light metal water bottle.
£4	Gloom of night. Take a lantern.
£5	Forgery. Take a jeweler's loupe.
£6	Honor. Take one letter, unopened, undeliverable.

HP	What were you good at?
1	First-class mail. Test Wil to turn dogs.
2	Special deliveries. Take one bicycle. You can outrace anyone on a paved street, but cannot stop or notice anything along the way.
3	Packaging. Never break a fragile object.
4	Routing. For any address know the name of someone who has lived there or lives there now.
5	Labelling. Immediately and accurately know the weight of anything held in one hand.
6	Paper routes. Always know this morning's headlines.

If you are the youngest player,
the whole group is 10k in debt to the vagrant's HOA. You technically can't sleep on the streets.

Burnboss

If you don't set small fires, the big ones will rage uncontrollably.

Sample Names
Morgan, Smollex, Danver, Kangg

You Get
Shovel, Hatchet (d6)

Cash	How'd you get out of the game?
£1	Deregulation. Take a directory of your competitors (d6).
£2	Technical arson. Take an expired license.
£3	Backdraft. Take no hair.
£4	Antidrought. It is still raining when the game starts, wherever you were licensed.
£5	Aggressive noncompete. Other crews will not talk to you.
£6	Burncrew mutiny. Take one gilt-edged page from a holy book, a hole burned thru the center.

HP	How did you start fires?
1	Flamethrower. Take one (d6, Blast, Bulky).
2	Ritual duel. Take one flint sword (d8, sparks against steel).
3	Pyrokinesis. Test Wil to ignite any dry material, once/day.
4	Advanced optics. Take one magnifying glass.
5	Alchemy. Take three firebombs (d6 Damage each round until extinguished).
6	The old-fashioned way. Take one fancy lighter. You can do tricks with it.

If you are the youngest player,
the whole group is 10k in debt to Hurly & Sons Insurance Insurance Insurance. Collateral damage incurred is not added to your debt.

PALACE RUN 0.2

I wrote this game that I'm very pleased with. I'm hoping to enter it in the 200 word RPG competition when submissions are open. Until then, I'll be playtesting it and tweaking it on Discord, and you should hit me up for a link to the server if you're interested.

Rules

The current version, at time of writing.

One player is REFEREE. Others, CHARACTERS.
"d6" means "six-sided die". "d20", 20-sided.

CHARACTERS
===
Choose name, POSSESSION. STAT=18.
CHECK or SAVE: roll d20<=STAT.
(CHECKS do; SAVES avoid.)
Attacks auto-hit, d6 damage to STAT.
After 2+ damage, SAVE. Failure --> STAT=1.
STAT<=0 --> death.
REST --> STAT=18.

POSSESSIONS

• Sword (+1 damage)
• Hand-mirror
• Marbles (100)
• Chalk
• Glue
• Flute
• Rope
• Wine
• Bucket
• Hammer

ROOMS
===

d6	ROOM	CONTENTS
1.	Courtyard	Plants
2.	Gallery	Sculptures
3.	Ballroom	Pillows
4.	Bedroom	Baskets
5.	Kitchen	Banquet
6.	Library	Fountain

d6	EXITS	FEATURE
1.	N-E	ENCOUNTER
2.	N-S	GLINT
3.	N-W	TREASURE
4.	S-E	TWIST
5.	S-W	Way UP
6.	E-W	Way DOWN

ENCOUNTERS
===
2-in-6 whenever CHARACTERS dawdle, REST, or clamor.
Flight auto-succeeds, CHECK or become lost.

d6	Mood	Encounter
1.	Sleepy	Guards
2.	Happy	Nobles
3.	Sad	Animals
4.	Afraid	Servants
5.	Hungry	Intruders
6.	Angry	Supernatural

GLINTS
===
Encounter clues.

TREASURE (d6)
===

1. Jewels
2. Wine
3. Porcelain
4. Tapestry
5. Letters
6. Gold

TWIST (d6)
===

1. 1 damage crossing (example: thorns).
2. Secret Door: CHECK locates.
3. Oubliette: SAVE or fall (d6 damage).
4. Non-Euclidean: exits to far rooms.
5. Unique room-type (example: laboratory).
6. Palace exit.

(194 words!)

Inspirations

• Into the Odd (free)
• Bastionland
• DIE TRYING
• The Witch Woods Microdungeon
• The Gardens of Ynn

Sparks

Tables are rough to fit in the game because each number also counts as a word. A d6 table is a minimum of 14 words. So I put this together, but can't even begin to fit it in. I worry that some of the words are too similar anyway though.

d20	Spark 1	Spark 2
1	ancient	banquet
2	black-market	ceremony
3	crystal	chandelier
4	dancing	chivalry
5	decadent	diplomacy
6	exotic	education
7	foreign	espionage
8	gambling	façade
9	gilt	gift
10	hidden	history
11	honorable	hunting
12	illegitimate	inheritance
13	ivory	intrigue
14	legal	marriage
15	luxury	money
16	mahogany	music
17	marble	piety
18	painted	taxes
19	social	tradition
20	usurping	war

Notes

It works well so far. I'm running a game on discord that's a mostly-straight whimsical fantasy palace. One of my players is putting together another game that's flavored after Darkest Dungeons. We haven't yet used the combat rules in anger, and running a game on Discord takes getting used to, but I'm optimistic.

Bloodring

A natural consequence of bad ideas. My entry in the Into the Odd PocketMod Jam (2019). CW: slavery, combat as sport.

Motivation

• Make gladiatorial combat interesting in a game where combat is best avoided.
• Provide an opportunity for things to get worse.
• Create something useful within the given constraints (time, form factor).

Notes

• Amounts of money are rough. Pay should be enough to motivate free gladiators, but not so much that slaves are freed too quickly.
• After first blood, combat is assumed to take turns.
• Mutilations are meant to give combat consequences between "death" and "recovery". They also convey the passage of time on days when PCs do not fight.
• Making more gladiators is easy: For captive gladiators I used 3d6. For free gladiators I used 4d6 drop lowest. For simpicity everyone starts with 1d6 HP and no mutilations.
• As a starting point for adventure it still feels lacking to me because it doesn't provide many motivations of its own and takes away a lot of the PCs' toys.
• Combat should be survivable enough that characters don't necessarily die, but unpleasant enough that PCs consider escape or revolt or other things preferable.
• Consider gambits from Moonhop or extra HP from Electric Bastionland (under "Scars").

Learnings

• The booklet was written in LibreOffice with an A7 paper size. It's apparently quite difficult to do N-up printing without a margin, so I ended up using PDFResizer.com. Had I time, I would like to use PDFjam.
• The PocketMod format really forces an economy of words. I found myself writing sentences that were barely intelligible in other contexts.
• The cover image is Piranesi. The Wound Man is Ambroise Paré.
• Printing on US letter paper, I found printing at 98% was the largest I could get before I lost things to the margins. This is why all my PocketMods are slightly off-kilter. The reasonable thing to do would be to print them all with outlines and then trim the paper to size, but that's work. Or find a printer that goes to the edges.

Files

bloodring-A7.pdf - for viewing on a screen.

bloodring-A4.pdf - for printing on A4 paper.

bloodring-US.pdf - for printing on US letter paper.

bloodring-A7.odt - for editing