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Resist Extinction

Extinction Roleplaying Game

I’ve posted a roleplaying game from the archives for you to download, read through, and enjoy. Consider this post the feedback thread if you want to share ideas or questions.

Extinction was an entry to a Mecha RPG Design contest. I cobbled it together fairly quickly based on some ideas that had been ruminating. While the game is mostly playable, it’s pretty simple and a bit of a mess. The rules could be more tightly focused and simplified. I’m not sure the premise is the most unique, but there are some sweet ideas in there.

I had been working on an updated version of this, but for now, I’ll just put this “ashcan” version out in the wild again. Enjoy!

Grab it here.

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WATERHACK is here

Good morning, and Happy Friday!

The little post-apocalyptic RPG I’ve been working on, inspired by OSR style hack games, is officially available on DriveThruRPG and on Itch.io. I’d love it if you took a look and helped spread the word.

In WATERHACK, you play Accountants (seriously) who wander around the wastes trying to insure communities have access to water. In order to do so, you may have to fend off water ghouls, vapor vampires, waste monsters, and other strange creatures and deal with conflicts. The game uses a roll under system on a D20 and requires actual water receptacles as representative of your hero’s health. Lots of tongue in cheek humor and stuff embedded in the rules. I hope it makes you laugh!

Get it for $4.99.

Happy Gaming!

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What do you do with old projects?

Hi, readers.

I’ve been combing through some of my old bits of writing, trying to find things to work on. I do have a couple of games I’m going to try to figure out in the coming weeks and have either a playtest or release before late December. That’s probably wishful thinking, but it’s good to have goals, right?

In my pile of old stuff, I have many scraps or somewhat sketched out game systems.

Some of these have elements that made it into games like Foreign Element or 2D10 or the Mark System.

Some have formatting and example text and clipart as placeholders. Do I release this stuff, put it on my website for a random passerby to consume and find something inspiring? Do I let it lie fallow in the archives?

Below I’ve attached one example. I was working on the Adventure Pit Game System to do a lot of things. The copyright notice is 2008, so I had just moved to a new city and was likely hoping to build off of Eldritch Ass Kicking. I wanted a game system that was simple and action-oriented but gave players more power to describe the after results of an action. Are you satisfied with basic success? Do you want to find good loot or set yourself up for future actions?

It’s kind of a mess, but it is an example of me toying around with things. I do believe it influenced Foreign Element in some ways, and I might even have borrowed some text here and there. Anyway, enjoy an example of a half-finished but mostly playable product.

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We are on itch.io

I’m pretty happy with DriveThruRPG’s setup. At one point, they charged for free products, but I’m sure they realize that driving traffic to the site for free stuff increases the chance of people buying stuff. That’s good.

But I’ve noticed itch.io recently, and so I will be setting up another site there.

Right now, the basic 2D10 RPG is the only item available, but I’ll be adding more in the coming days.

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Alternate Cover for Basic Hack

Zachary M sent a nice note of support for the Basic Hack with a modified, printer-friendly cover in case you decide to print out the PDF. I agree that this is definitely useful, since all that red may not be super cool on the ink/toner.

Grab it here:
https://strangehappeningsofathirdsin.blogspot.com/2017/12/i-do-art-occasionally.html

I’ve got a couple of fixes to the Basic Hack document that I am going to work. And I’ll be blunt – I have always been unhappy with the Bandit Wizard adventure I plugged in at the back. It was written a long time ago, so I modified it a bit for the Basic Hack but it really doesn’t fit the tone of the rest of the rules. I do have a print version in the works too, initially at LuLu. Stay tuned!

— Nathan

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