Author: Stefan

Three six-sided dice stacked on top of each other in a pyramid shape.

Design Challenge: Conditions & Risks

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When I talked about the core dice mechanic of what would eventually become Project Star Quest, I mentioned the concept of Risks. In short, every time you roll a 1 with your d6 dice pool, you must mark one of several Risks. Each mark represents a literal narrative risk you are taking as part of your action, but has no direct mechanical impact just yet. Only when a Risk takes six marks, do you suffer its Condition–a negative effect you will need to deal with. Shredded armor, running out of ammo, being pinned down–just some examples of what a Risk could be. Finally, you can’t clear marks; you can only remove a Condition once you have it, which also removes all marks.

So, what’s a Condition?

If you played a tactical-style TTRPG before (Pathfinder, Draw Steel, Lancer, etc), you know what a condition is. Most of them are bad, hindering your character in some way or another. They usually last a set amount of time measured in rounds, start/end of turn, or allowing for some sort of roll to clear them. Pretty standard stuff.

So that’s what I did. I created a bunch of conditions you get to dish out and suffer. From being unable to move, to taking more/dealing less damage, to all the other classics.

And then I ran into a big issue: the list got big, which means there are a ton of different things each player might now have to track. And then again, I noticed an even bigger issues: conditions are in direct conflict with the design of Risks. So much so that the list of potential conditions more than doubled!

Who the fuck wants to track all these conditions?

Honestly, I think conditions are always one of the weaker designs of any tactical game. There are always way too many of them, and they all do vastly different things–some conditions in Draw Steel have several paragraphs worth of rules. Draw Steel doesn’t have too many conditions to start, but still, it’s a lot to track.

Once I realized that my conditions came into conflict with Risks, I knew I had to make some changes. Not only was the number of conditions simply too high, there was an overlap with the standalone conditions and the Risk conditions. For example, I had a condition called “Stop” which made it so you can’t reposition at the start of your turn. But then I also had a Risk category called “Mobility” and once you fill out all six marks, you gain the “Pinned Down” condition, which did the same, besides making it so that you can’t benefit from cover. Two conditions doing the same thing. That’s not great.

So I went back to the things I keep in mind when tinkering with a game: Less is more. And bring it back to the core mechanics.

This is where I landed.

Pressure

I removed nearly all standalone conditions and moved them into the Risks. Risks are sorted into four categories, which are also your main combat stats (Offense, Defense, Control, Resist). I went over stats previously, but here is a short refresher: Offense is your base damage on attacks; Defense is your damage threshold before getting hurt; Control is your base effect magnitude for controlling effects; Resist is your reduction of controlling effects directed at you. Every character has these, player or monster a like.

Whenever an enemy would force a condition on you, it will now force you to mark one or more Risks on one of the four categories. This is called Pressure. Much like marking a Risk from rolling a 1, you the player get to narrate how the enemy is putting pressure on you, letting you choose which Risk within that category you want to mark.

Let’s take a look at all Risks within their categories:

(This is a big sneak peak at actual design content, with lots of hitherto unheard terms. It’s also not final.)

  • Offense
    • Weakened. Set Base Offense to 0. (You can still increase your damage with Hits)
    • All Out. Can only attack at melee. (As a tactical game, only being able to do melee is a big deal)
    • Panic. All Engage actions have disadvantage. (Disadvantage halves your total value like damage)
  • Defense
    • Vulnerable. Set Base Defense to 0. (You’ll take real harm a lot easier)
    • Shredded. Can’t use Armor trigger. (Armor triggers let you use your armor as a Power Roll)
    • Dazed. Can’t Block or Evade. (No means to reduce damage)
  • Control
    • Confused. Set Base Control to 0. (Control affects area of effects and buff magnitude as well as forced movement or your chance to place conditions on enemies)
    • Stunned. Can only use one Interrupt trigger each round instead of turn. (Big tactical drawback)
    • Bleeding. All Engage actions cause +1 Affliction (Afflictions are round-based damage over time effects)
  • Resist
    • Overwhelmed. Set Resist to 0. (Enemies can place more pressure or other effects on you)
    • Unstable. Can’t Reposition. (Can’t move for free)
    • Exposed. When taking Stress, mark an additional Stress. (Stress are lethal forms of damage)

If an enemy places 3 Pressure on Defense, you still get to decide where to place these 3 marks as you would with rolling 3 Risks, just limited to the items within the Defense category.

Sorting Risks under your primary stats/attributes and linking almost all conditions to these risks streamlines a lot of the design. It also brings conditions back to the core mechanic of Risks, which just makes it all click better. There’s still 12 of them here, which isn’t exactly a small list. But this isn’t the final design, and I can see a world where they get cut down even more. I think they probably need to be reduced, to be honest.

For now, I envision a character sheet that has the four stats prominent at the top, and the three Risks for each underneath it with its marks and a short text explaining the condition. I think that can be quite elegant, and it keeps getting these conditions mostly player facing, as they have to mark Risks of their choice.

Monsters

Monsters don’t mark Risks, so for them, the players still get to place standalone conditions. However, there’s a small list for them which I plan to streamline as well. For example, do we need separate conditions for Slow, Prone, Restraint, etc? Or can a single condition that simulates “not being able to move and easier to hit” do the trick? I haven’t finalized this list, yet, but I think it’ll be shorter.

Removing Conditions

Conditions last indefinitely–there is no saving throw or end-of-turn timer. Once you have them, you must make an active choice to get rid of them. At the start of your turn, you can use your one Setup action to remove one condition, instead of , for example, moving or gaining more Stamina. You can also spend Stamina as an Engage Action to remove several conditions at once.

Enemies can’t clear conditions freely, either. The GM has means to do so, but that’s a topic of another post that digs into enemy design and Animus.

The intention here is simple: player agency. Players decide (to a degree) which condition they will get, and they decide when to remove them. That level of control over what bad stuff happens to you and how to remove it might just help keeping track of everything. Might feel more personal or something.

Conditions, again

Some standalone conditions ended up remaining in this design: Winded, Vulnerable X, Affliction X, Stagger X.

  • I talked about Winded before. It’s a condition you get when running out of Stamina from certain actions (such as Evade).
  • Stagger is only for enemies. They get a stack of Stagger whenever they avoid all damage or controlling effects. Stagger makes it easier to hit them, so the more you pelt an enemy, even if they manage to survive, the easier it becomes to defeat them. There are other ways to build up Stagger, as well.
  • Vulnerable X increases the damage you take at the end of the turn by X, if you took any damage at all. I’m not sure if this condition is really needed. Time will tell.
  • Affliction X is damage you take at the start of a round. All damage over time effects (fire, bleeding, acid, etc) are tallied up and added to this single Affliction.

Buffs

So far, conditions have all been negative. But sometimes, a condition can be positive, too. I call them Buffs, and there are three of them:

  • Elude, which makes it so enemies are less likely to target you.
  • Taunt, which makes it so enemies are more likely to target you.
  • Guard, which is removed instead of marking Stress.

All other buffs I thought of before are instead streamlined into Boosts. Boosts stack and last until the end of combat. As a reaction, you can spend Boosts on actions as if they are Stamina. Much like Pressure, Boosts keep things simple, and being able to boost your Stamina with them helps you with every action, as well as dodge and evade. But using it is a reaction, so you can’t use it while your are Winded. Game design.

I’m thinking of allowing more uses for Boosts, such as buying Focus with it. Though, this might become a perk you can unlock as part of your advancement, instead of a core mechanic.

Conclusion

I think I know why I feel that conditions are the weakest point of most tactical games’ design. Striking the balance of variety and complexity versus ease of use and being able to track them all is tricky. I attempt to do so by making them mostly part of the core dice mechanic I invented for this game, which does feel like a good approach.

Risks are player facing, which might help them with keeping track of them all. It also makes running enemies easier, again, as the GM doesn’t need to worry about telling players which condition they get and what it does. They simply say, “You take 2 Pressure to your Defense” and let the players place their marks as they see fit. I think that’s elegant. And much like marking a Risk from rolling a 1, the player is free to give a quick narration of how that Pressure effects them based on the Risks they mark and Conditions they might get. It just brings it all back to the core dice mechanic of Risks, Hits, and Momentum.

I’m happy with that.

I haven’t nailed conditions for monsters just yet, but maybe there is something similar I can do. Tracking a handful of monsters all with their own conditions is a pain in the ass, so I will want to ensure that the process is just as streamlined. If not more. Being able to place Stagger on them is a good start, already. Part of the enemy design is that, if a monster reaches a certain amount of Stagger, they “break” which causes something negative to happen to them. It’s similar to Risks in that regard. So, one thought I had is that players only ever increase Stagger instead of placing any conditions besides Vulnerable and Afflictions. That might feel to limited though, not enough tactical juice here.

All in all, though, I feel strongly about this design direction. It’s both simple and in-depth. And it can be expanded further with perks or gear that offer “free” Risk slots to mark instead of your main ones. Lots of options there.

I’ll leave it there, for now.

Thanks for reading,

Stefan

More Project Star Quest

Design Challenge: Conditions & Risks

Conditions are a staple of any tactical TTRPG. I want to streamline them into something that fits my core dice mechanic by making them part of Risks.

Action Points IV: Combat Basics

Combat is essential for this type of game, so let’s look at some of the basics for my WiP. Mockup ability examples included.

Picture of a bookshelf with books who have each a prompt written on their spine. Daily Prompts 1) Patron 2) Prompt 3) Tavern 4) Message 5) Ancient 6) Motive 7) Journey 8) Explore 9) Inspire 10) Origin 11) Flavour 12) Path 13) Darkness 14) Mystery 15) Deceive 16) Overcome 17) Renew 18) Sign 19) Destiny 20) Enter 21) Unexpected 22) Ally 23) Recent 24) Reveal 25) Challenge 26) Nemesis 27) Tactic 28) Suspense 29) Connect 30) Experience 31) Reward Question Prompts (roll D6) 1) Who 2) What 3) Where 4) When 5) Why 6) How Mood Prompts (roll D10) 1) Envious 2) Nostalgic 3) Proud 4) Enthusiastic 5) Confident 6) Optimistic 7) Lucky 8) Grateful 9) Contemplative 10) Excited Subject Prompts (roll D8) 1) Adventure 2) Character 3) Genre 4) Rule 5) Accessory 6) Art 7) Person 8) Lesson

#RPGaDay2025 day 15: Deceive

StefanLeave a comment

I think it’s important that games are honest about what they’re meant to do. Have a clear and intentional focus. Likewise, the people playing that game should be honest about what it is they want from it. Whether it’s even the right fit for the type of story/genre/game they want to play.

This is a post about me wanting people to please play a different game. Different than the only one they know. The one that sucks all the air out of a room, because it has the weight of legacy and the power of cash behind it. Because it’s a brand that got so lucky, it thinks it’s actually good at what it sets out to do.

And what it sets out to do is …nothing? It’s about nothing. Most of the rules are about combat, and it’s really bad at that. What’s one of the most popular type of advice and 3rd-party content you find for that game? How to speed up or improve combat. It’s also not a game about exploring interesting stories. The rules barely give interesting decision points, mostly just a binary yes/no answer with a given roll. It’s not a game about dungeon crawling, despite it’s legacy. No systems to facilitate an interesting delve into forbidden depths. It’s a game that lies about what it can do. Yeah, there are great live plays of amazing storytellers playing fantastic games but, come on. They’re creating their amazing work in spite of the game they’re playing. They add so much weight and pathos into the rules, which is just not there organically. And it deceives their audiences, too. They think that game can make them be players like their heroes on the screen. But it can’t. The game does not, at all, facilitate deep and engaging gameplay. It’s bare and it’s boring and it’s lying about it.

And what really grinds my gears is, it convinced an entire community–the largest out there it seems–that it can do everything. Star Wars. Modern Noir. Cyberpunk. Seafaring pirates. Dread and Horror. All with that cute d20 and rules bloated with nostalgia and the baggage from an era of wargaming.

Listen. You like the d20 game, fine. It’s a fine game, all things considered. It’s superficial and uninterested in having mechanics with true intentionality, but it works if you don’t think about it too hard. I played it for many years.

But it’s lying to you. It’s a brand, a cash-cow for the H-Corp behind it. There are so, so many games better at any given thing the d20 game claims to be about. Draw Steel, Lancer, those are great for combat. Spire, Heart, Blades in the Dark, they can bring the deep, delicious drama. Shadowdark for when you must delve a dungeon. Alien RPG, Mothership for your space horror. Spectaculars, Masks for when superhero drama is your jam. The list is endless.

There’s this prevailing idea not to shit-talk the d20 game if you want its fans to try out something new. And being nice and polite is probably the right way. But, fuck, it’s frustrating sometimes. A lifetime worth of content devoted to “making the game better” and not one thought about why they’re fixing H-corp’s game for free, when they have all the cash in the world to do so themselves. To really care. To truly deliver an experience worthy of its legacy while also pushing the brand forward. Entire independent creators tying their entire brand and livelihood to that one game, and once disaster strikes (as it so happens with corporate interests and shareholders involved), they’re all panicking that they might lose everything they have worked for. And that sucks, it really fucking sucks.

The TTRPG community is so vibrant and sexy and diverse and creative. People making awesome games for awesome players, and yet, if they don’t tie themselves to that one big game, it’s a nearly impossible uphill battle to even get noticed. And when they do, people will compare it to the big guy. Even ask why an indie creator would “change this from how the d20 game did it,” as if that’s what happened. As if everything starts with that game as its foundation.

Somehow, they deceived us all.

Three six-sided dice stacked on top of each other in a pyramid shape.

Action Points IV: Combat Basics

StefanLeave a comment

Last time, I talked about the action economy for this game, giving an overview of what sort of things you can do during combat. Now, let’s look at combat itself.

Combat Statistics

–or just called Stats. You have four primary stats: Offense, Defense, Control, Resist. Each of these stats has two important rating: Base and Total. The base rating is just the number written in that stat. The total rating is that stat after all modifiers are applied, such as adding Hits from a Power Roll.

  • Offense, which is your base damage of all of your damaging abilities. Abilities with the Offense tag add Hits rolled on their Power Roll to your total Offense.
  • Defense, which is the threshold of damage you can take in a turn before needing to mark Stress. Stress is really bad.
  • Control, which determines the magnitude of effects and conditions, such as the size of an area or the distance of a force move ability. Abilities with the Control tag add Hits rolled on their Power Roll to your total Control.
  • Resist reduces incoming Control effects. Resist is subtracted from the attacker’s total Control value, and if it’s 0 or less, the effect is avoided.

That’s it for stats. I think these terms can be adjusted based on the genre or themes of the game they are used in. A low fantasy game that has little magic and uses mostly weapons could call Offense something like Arsenal, or maybe it’s Firepower in a sci-fi game. Defense could be renamed to Reflex in a fast paced JRPG style game. You get the idea, but for now we stick with this generic terms as they do the trick.

Player characters also have some secondary stats, such as Speed and Stamina Refresh. Currently, I’m thinking that a Stamina cap, or maximum Stamina, isn’t really needed. Yeah, you could store up a ton of Stamina for some reason, that would mean you didn’t do anything or defended yourself.

Abilities

Player characters have several abilities from many different sources. Some are inherent based on choices made, such as picking a class (if this game has classes), or other advancement options. Weapons and other gear are also treated as abilities and are resolved the same way.

All abilities have the same core design:

  • Tags, which categorize the ability and let you add to or modify it based on other perks you might have.
  • Power, which is the Stamina cost and dice pool for the ability–the Power Roll.
  • Base Effect, which is the thing that happens when using the ability regardless of the roll. i.e. Damage.
  • Range, which is the basic range at which the weapon can be used.
  • Crits, which are special effects you can purchase by spending Hits from the Power Roll.

Since weapons are treated as abilities, let’s take a look at how that would work. This is just a mockup, proof of concept sort of thing.

A Sword (Power 6)

Weapon, Melee, Offense
Effect: Deal damage to one target.
Range: Melee (adjacent targets)
Crits: Spend your Hits to buy each of the following effects once per use:

  • Sweep (2). Deal just your base Offense to another adjacent enemy.
    • Deal some damage to an adjacent target that won’t be modified by Hits. This damage is considered your total Offense against that target for the purpose of things that adjust that total value, such as Disadvantage (more on that later).
  • Swordplay (2). Slide the Target (Control). You may enter any space the target has left.
    • Slide lets you move the target in any one direction you like, up to a number of spaces equal to your total Control. Since the weapon does not have the Control tag, your Hits do not increase your total Control for this Crit.
  • Defensive Stance (4). The weapon gains the Block tag this turn.
    • Usually, blocking with a weapon or item that doesn’t have the Block tag would cause you to become Winded.

It costs 6 Stamina to use this weapon based on its Power, and that gives you 6 dice to roll. You can spend more Stamina to charge the use, of course. Any 4+ you roll is a Hit. You can buy more Hits by spending Focus, which you earn by rolling 6s. Hits are added to your total Offense, as the sword has the Offense tag, and you can then also spend Hits to buy Crits. It’s not an either-or–Hits increase your Offense regardless of how many of them you spend on Crits.

Defensive Stance is a great option if you know that the enemy acting on your turn is attacking you. This way you can reduce any damage they might do to you in melee by the Power of your Sword without becoming Winded.

Thunder Roar (Power 6)

Spell, Control
Effect: Push (Control) Target
Range: Close (within 3 spaces)
Crits: Spend your hits to buy each of the following effects once per use:

  • Outburst (3/5). This use gains the Area tag and becomes a Burst 1 instead. +2 Hits to change the area to Control.
    • Burst 1 means it affects all targets adjacent to you, but you can spend more Hits to increase the area to your total Control stat.
  • Force of Nature (4/5/6). For 4 Hits, deal your base Offense as damage to the target. For 5 Hits, add the Lightning tag. For 6 Hits, also gain the Offense tag.
    • This Crit adds damage to this Control ability. Pay an additional Hit to add the Lightning tag, turning the damage into Lightning damage and make the entire ability stronger against enemies that are weak to this element. One more Hit will also allow you to increase your total Offense with your total amount of Hits rolled.

Here is an example of a spell that is nature themed. At its base, it can push a single target away from you up to a distance equal to your total Control–Hits are added to your base Control as it has the Control tag. You can upgrade it with Crits to become an area effect around you, and even add lightning damage to it.

Like I said, these are just a mockup of the kinds of things an ability or weapon would be able to do. It shows off how attacking would look, how Control is used, and how flexible the tag system could be. I envision these abilities to be written on a card-sized paper, which you can lay out in front of you.

The real challenge will be to design Crits that are interesting but not too complex or overwhelming. This mock sword has three options, but to that you would add Crit effects from other perks that are always usable, so that list could get a too big to maintain a good sense what you can do.

Range Bands

The game is played out on a grid. For Project Star Quest, I’m using a hex-grid, cause it’s sci-fi and more played out using ranged combat. Less weirdness with diagonal measurements that way.

That said, I am experimenting with using range bands, something found mostly in more narrative games that have combat, to determining distances for abilities ranges and enemy movement. Currently, that looks like this:

  • Melee: Can only adjacent spaces.
  • Close: Can target up to 3 spaces away.
  • Moderate: Can target up to 6 spaces away.
  • Far: Can target up to 10 spaces away.
  • Extreme: Can target up to 15 spaces away.

All abilities have a set range, and enemy movement is also set to one of these ranges. However, you can target an enemy one range step higher, though the ability now has Disadvantage (see below). Melee actions are an exception as they can’t be used at a range beyond melee.

Why do this?

Well, I find that in most games, the design uses range bands behind the scenes–in 5e, you’ll find that 20 feet, 60 feet, 120 feet, and similar numbers repeat all the time. Draw Steel likes to have distances of 1, 2, 5, 10, 12 a lot. The only difference with my design is that I make this thing part of the interaction. Instead of giving characters plus 1 or minus 2 on a range for whatever reason, I can shift their band up or down with effects, buffs, and so on. I like that.

(There is also a chance that I will remove the grid altogether at some point, at least to try it out.)

Other Factors

Here some other things can affect your abilities.

  • Disadvantage. When an action has Disadvantage, you must cut your total Offense/Control in half after all modifiers have been applied. Having more than one source of Disadvantage means that your total Offense/Control is 0 for that use, which can’t be increased by any means.
  • Dangerous. Some abilities are considered Dangerous, meaning that every 6 you roll is also a Risk you must mark.
  • Impact. Abilities might have an Impact rating. For every point of Impact, you count a Hit twice. For example, if your ability has an Impact of 2 and you roll 4 Hits, you can count the first two Hits twice, for a total of 6 Hits.
  • Cover. When your target has cover, you consider them to be a range step farther than they actually are. For example, if you attack an enemy in cover that is within 5 spaces–Moderate Range, which goes up to 6–you treat them as if they were at Far range (up to 10 spaces). So, if your ability has a base range of Moderate, you would have to attack one step beyond your range band and have disadvantage.

Stress

The last thing I want to touch on for the basics of combat is Stress. This is serious damage you want to avoid at all costs.

Here’s out it works:

You tally up all the damage you take during the course of a single turn. If, at the end of that turn, you took more damage than you the value of your Defense stat, you will take a point of Stress. A player character can only take a small number of Stress points before they are taken out (not outright dead, I prefer more narrative consequences).

Break Gear

Instead of marking Stress to your character, you can decide to instead put that Stress on your worn gear. That breaks them, making them unusable for the rest of the fight. It’s a tough choice to make, but it’s pretty cinematic when you must break your sword as the dark lord winds up to strike you down, just so you can stay in the fight just one more turn.

Healing & Patching

Characters will have a limited resources to heal Stress from themselves or Patch broken gear. Think of it as the Estus Flask in Dark Souls–a limited amount of healing potions everyone has access to and will remove Stress when used as an Engage Action. Patching up gear restores its use but reduces its Power by 1 until they are properly fixed during some form of downtime. And an item with a Power of 0 is destroyed for good.

Monster Stress

Most monsters die if they take a single point of Stress. The idea here is that the players will face a lot of monsters, instead of just a handful. Think of Aragorn facing down an entire horde of orcs. They die easily, but are numerous.

Boss monsters have more Stress they can mark, making them much tougher and dangerous.

When you damage a monster but fail to inflict Stress, they gain a stack of the Stagger condition. Similar to Winded, Stagger makes monsters easier to damage in subsequent turns, and if they gain enough stacks, they break and suffer some terrible effect. I will dig into conditions and monster design soon enough to explain these things in more detail.

That’s enough for combat basics for now. I have a feeling that a lot of these concept might not make a lot of sense outside of the larger context of the complete rules. But it also showcases some of the basic ideas for how I think the players will interact with the game during combat. The two mock abilities–a sword and thunder roar–are great examples for how critical effects would work. The design possibilities here are really exciting to me.

I think Conditions will be next, which includes a deeper look at how Risks work during combat. Stay tuned for that.

Bye.

Picture of a bookshelf with books who have each a prompt written on their spine. Daily Prompts 1) Patron 2) Prompt 3) Tavern 4) Message 5) Ancient 6) Motive 7) Journey 8) Explore 9) Inspire 10) Origin 11) Flavour 12) Path 13) Darkness 14) Mystery 15) Deceive 16) Overcome 17) Renew 18) Sign 19) Destiny 20) Enter 21) Unexpected 22) Ally 23) Recent 24) Reveal 25) Challenge 26) Nemesis 27) Tactic 28) Suspense 29) Connect 30) Experience 31) Reward Question Prompts (roll D6) 1) Who 2) What 3) Where 4) When 5) Why 6) How Mood Prompts (roll D10) 1) Envious 2) Nostalgic 3) Proud 4) Enthusiastic 5) Confident 6) Optimistic 7) Lucky 8) Grateful 9) Contemplative 10) Excited Subject Prompts (roll D8) 1) Adventure 2) Character 3) Genre 4) Rule 5) Accessory 6) Art 7) Person 8) Lesson

#RPGaDay2025 Day 14: Mystery

StefanLeave a comment

One of my favorite terms in a TTRPG is “Play to find out.” I don’t know its origin, but it’s often found in fiction-first games. Solo games, games with lots of prompts or player agency or similar mechanics that make it hard to prep for.

It means that you discover the story of your game as you play through it. It’s literally the opposite of a railroad, which I talked about last time. It means the fiction is front and center, and whenever something happens, the GM, the players, they ask questions about the goings on and follow where the answers might lead.

Instead of knowing all that will/can/should happen, you keep the game itself a mystery, which unfolds as you and your players explore its narrative.

From a design perspective, I appreciate any game that includes mechanics in their core design that enables fiction-first, play to find out, behavior. Games powered by the Apocalypse have players make moves as part of their actions, and the outcomes of these moves ask questions of them. Ironsworn, a game keep coming back to, is built on that engine and, if you ask me, perfects this formula. It’s a solo game after all, so it must be great at asking questions and allowing you to follow the answers.

Mythic GM Emulator is another great product you can include with any other more traditional game. Not just to emulate/replace the GM, but also to enhance your own game-mastering. It’s full of prompts you can generate to enhance the fiction and surprise yourself. It has an entire system to curate the ebb and flow, the calm and chaos of an unfolding narrative. Even a game with a binary, simple resolution mechanic like 5e can benefit from the dynamics and inspirations a supplement like Mythic GME can bring.

Even if you don’t want to use prompts and random generation throughout your sessions–if you prefer to prep and plan–things like Mythic are still super useful for game prep. I use it virtually all the time between my Draw Steel sessions. I know of some of the things I want to include–villains, NPC, events, etc–and then use Mythic GME to answer some of the questions I would have. Why is the NPC here? What does the villain want? Where is the artifact and what can it do? I ask myself these questions and answer them with the prompts generated with Mythic, letting the inspiration and answers lead me while I prepare the next session or adventure.

It’s freeing. It opens up your creativity in ways you couldn’t imagine. Prepping games is a lot of work, way more work than your players need to do week after week. Turning prep into a bit of play with random prompts can add a lot of fun. And with more fun comes more creativity and ideas and inspiration.

Picture of a bookshelf with books who have each a prompt written on their spine. Daily Prompts 1) Patron 2) Prompt 3) Tavern 4) Message 5) Ancient 6) Motive 7) Journey 8) Explore 9) Inspire 10) Origin 11) Flavour 12) Path 13) Darkness 14) Mystery 15) Deceive 16) Overcome 17) Renew 18) Sign 19) Destiny 20) Enter 21) Unexpected 22) Ally 23) Recent 24) Reveal 25) Challenge 26) Nemesis 27) Tactic 28) Suspense 29) Connect 30) Experience 31) Reward Question Prompts (roll D6) 1) Who 2) What 3) Where 4) When 5) Why 6) How Mood Prompts (roll D10) 1) Envious 2) Nostalgic 3) Proud 4) Enthusiastic 5) Confident 6) Optimistic 7) Lucky 8) Grateful 9) Contemplative 10) Excited Subject Prompts (roll D8) 1) Adventure 2) Character 3) Genre 4) Rule 5) Accessory 6) Art 7) Person 8) Lesson

#RPGaDay2025 Day 13: Darkness

StefanLeave a comment

Listen. I struggle with this prompt. What do I have to say about Darkness with regards to RPGs? What do I connect with this term? First thing comes to mind is mental struggles and how TTRPGs can help with that.

I’m not qualified to talk about how playing these games can be therapeutic–I read some articles on how some people might find some sort of emotional help in games, but I’m not the right person to dig into that. It’s just the first thing that came to mind with this prompt on that topic.

Here’s a Darkness I know well, though: Burnout.

See, I’m am a forever-GM, as they say. Not because I feel that I have to, but because I want to. I love running, and, honestly, I feel like I’m not a great player. Can’t turn off that GM-brain, whether it comes to making rulings or to explore characters of other players, or whatever. I try. It’s fine. But behind the screen is where I belong, in the end.

But I had dark times with that, too. For so many reasons, really. I struggled with running and playing 5e after a few years, for example. But at the time, I didn’t know of a good alternative, and even if I would have, I wasn’t sure my group would enjoy it. So I powered through it, session after session. And it wasn’t all bad, I guess. But I didn’t enjoy myself, didn’t look forward to the next Sunday. Even remembering it now, it feels stressful and, yeah, dark.

One day, though, I had enough. I just told them. I was honest about me not having fun. Not because of them, but because of this game I was just so done with. Because of the campaign we wanted to play being so poorly written, and because the game just not really feeling like it was going anywhere. This is heartbreaking, because we successfully finished several campaigns before. We saw characters rise and shine, die, come back, and change over the course of months. But now, it all just really sucked. I think they all felt it too.

So I spoke up. Said my truth.

And you know what? They heard me. We stopped. Right then and there. I told them that I want to try some other systems, and so we did. Savage Worlds was next. Blades in the Dark came right after. One of them ran Lancer for us for a bit, and then I ran it for a while. Same person ran Pathfinder 2 for us, but I didn’t vibe with that all that much. We noodled around for a bit, unsure of what to play, messing around with this and that.

Then came Draw Steel, and that seemed to revitalize the group again. It’s been going strong since then, and I once again look forward to every session. We’ve been building out our own lore, the characters are so full of potential, and I’m enjoying my time preparing for the next Sunday.

Here’s my point: If you feel GM burnout, talk to your players. Be honest. Open, vulnerable even, if that’s what it takes. Whatever level of trust you have with them, lean on that. Ask them to run something. Even taking a break for a single sessions could make all the difference.

I have since learned to let go of the wheel more often. Outside of my regular Sunday game, we play a game once every week with a slightly less consistent cast, trying out new games every few weeks. And I am not running any of them at the moment. In fact, my players–friends–have all offered to run something next. So our to-play schedule is full right now, and I can relax and just learn to be a better player.

I realize how lucky I am here. It’s hard to find people, harder to keep them around. But if you’re like me, if running game is your passion but your heart just isn’t in it right now, please–please–take a break. And if you can, trust your players to have your back. Don’t let the game become a chore, the next sessions hang over you like a dark cloud. Lots of things to worry about these days, this doesn’t need to be one of them.