I Have Single Handedly Revoloutionised Random Encounters. Maybe

Arguably, this post IS an advert, but it’s for something cool that I made myself and that I’m giving away to you for free.

Alternate title options for this post included:

• “I am the greatest and biggliesty minded GM app developer that the world has ever seen!”

• “Your random encounters suck! I am Batman.”

• “Yes, I know, I feel it too.”

Ha, I’m feeling pretty self satisfied today, I’ve finished developing an app to help GMs remember to run random encounters at the table, and I want to tell you all about it.

Ain’t Nobody Got Time For ‘Dungeon Turns’

Man alive I am so bad at remembering to run random encounters. I think they’re a great idea because as long as the possible range of encounters has been curated in a sensible way, they make the given environment seem alive, and stop environments from becoming this static place that only reacts to the presence of PCs when they trigger location based events. Buuuuut the old school method of tracking “dungeon turns” on a piece of paper, and then rolling a d6 after every turn to see if you get a 1 to trigger an encounter has two major problems for me:

• Enforcing “turns” during exploration feels like it detracts too much from my free flow style of play. Arbitrarily saying “OK you’ve all done a thing, and I’ve decided that was 10 dungeon minutes - time to run some dungeon checks”, always felt quite forced at my table.

• Crucially, I always forget to track dungeon turns and roll for encounters. I’m too busy reacting to the players and following the gameplay to remember to stop everything and trigger a dungeon turn. Maybe I’m just old and my memory is failing me!

Blatantly inspired by Shadowdark’s use of real timers for tracking torch light - my app enables the GM to ‘set it and forget it’ so an appropriate but “random” timer starts ticking down towards an encounter trigger.

The best way to understand its purpose is just as with manually rolling d6s to check for encounters, you know an encounter WILL happen eventually, it’s just a matter of HOW LONG will it take, which is information that’s hidden from the players. My app just means that the GM doesn’t have to think about it or track it manually mid game.

How Does the Encounter Timer App Work?

When the app boots up you’ll be presented with the main screen which gives you a number of options to engage with.

Encounter Frequency Range:

Enter in the lowest and highest value in seconds that you want the next encounter to activate between. By default these values are set to 300 and 900 (5 and 15 minutes).

Encounter Countdown Timer:

When the timer is running, this will countdown to zero then trigger an audible alert to remind GMs to activate their encounter.

During the countdown, if the player characters actions are drawing lots of attention to themselves you can tap the timer to reduce the countdown by 25% with each tap. You cannot take the timer below 10 seconds this way.

Mid:

Tap to have the app pick a random number in seconds between your Encounter Frequency Range, and commence the countdown.

Good for exploring areas of normal danger levels.

High:

As with Mid, but halves the random number generated.

For exploring areas with a higher likelihood of encounter.

||:

Pause and play the current timer.

X:

Cancel the timer and return it to zero (without triggering the alarm).

Encounter Timer in action

What Else Do You Need To Know?

1. It’s Android 5.0 and over only - sorry Apple people, but I have a Google Pixel 7a and I don’t have the knowledge to create this for non android architecture. If any Fruit based developers out there want to remake it, that’s cool with me.

2. It’s exclusively available to subscribers of the Mailer of Many Things as a free reward. It is not available on app stores.

3. At time of writing, the app is free, and is completely unmonitised. No ads, trackers, or any other shady money grabbing behaviour. I have no intention of this ever changing.

4. It’s an APK file, which is an executable installation file that you should run from your Android phone. By default, many phones don’t let you install things manually like this because the app has not been verified by Google, and instead prompt you to enable this functionality in your settings.

5. I am a backend cloud database developer by trade with limited front end programming skills, so I created and compiled this app using Kodular. I accept no responsibility for anything unexpected that happens when installing or using this software. To the very best of my knowledge, the app is safe and functions only as described.

6. The app works best in conjunction with preprepared encounter tables that have been tailored by the GM to the player characters current environment. The apps only purpose is to remind you that it’s time for an encounter - what the encounter is remains entirely up to you.

7. I may actually be Batman.

conclusion

I can’t wait to run a game using this, and I’ve already got some ideas about additional functionality. If you end up trying it out, please, please, please let me know how you got on and if you have any suggestions.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

3 More GM Crutches that Hold Your Game Back

Now then, have we all had a good week? Are we feeling ready for round 2? Good, lets continue.

Hopefully you’ve tossed away the first 2 big crutches identified in last weeks post, and you’re already starting to reap the rewards of a freer game. Well, now I’ve got 3 more crutches that hold your game back, and you should seriously consider binning these too.

3) Artistic, Player Facing, Playable Maps

Yes, yes, they look cool, but outside of sparing use for set piece battles like “boss fights”, they just take the game towards video game territory. You see, the thing with video games is that the best video game is a video game, so stop trying to be a video game and be a TTRPG instead and play to those strengths.

Why do we use them?

• Maps look cool, and give a certain wow factor.

• They take the pressure off when describing locations - you can just point at the map instead.

• Players with minis or tokens are able to pin point their location.

Why are they bad?

• If you rely upon them, they limit your encounters to only situations where you have a relevant map handy.

• When you’re using them to gradually reveal a location, then the players can’t help but metagame and notice areas that they have not explored - making exploration less about in game experience and more about how much of the map has been revealed.

• Players will take the map as gospel and stop using their imagination. If the map doesn’t specifically show a chandelier then the players are much less likely to ask if there is one for them to shoot down on top of the mob of Goblins.

What is the alternative?

Depending on what is more appropriate for the moment, you should use either theatre of the mind, or quickly draw up a rough map on a Chessex grid. If we’re talking about mapping out a dungeon then let the players do that themselves in their notes.

Gridded battle maps are massively over-used in my experience, and they only really have value in two situations: The battle is very tactical and positioning is very important, or you’re filming an actual play and you want to give your audience something to look at.

Theatre of the mind is generally considered old school, but it’s just as applicable today as it ever was for filling the gaps when gridded maps are not suitable. Big monster? TotM. Horror game? TotM. Small scuffle? TotM. The idea here is that with a couple of prompts, the players imagination and questions will create something far cooler than you can describe, and it really isn’t important that everyone is imagining a slightly different thing.

If you struggle to describe environments, start with the areas utility: “It’s a Kitchen” - At that point you don’t need to describe the sink or the fridge, players have already filled in those blanks. You can move on to identifying the key objects in the room that the players might want to engage with like the discolored brick above the stove, and the stinky open casserole pan on the table.

4) Rule Expansion Books

Ho boy, this is a contentious one.

They’re the worst for this by far, so I’ll pick on them - Since 2014 Lizards Ate Your Toast have released a boat load of 5e expansion books (not counting adventure modules) all containing new rules and stats, sold under the guise of enabling your players to do/experience more things.

If you believe that then I have a bridge to sell you.

I get it, they’re a business and we want our favourite games to succeed, and for them to succeed then the business needs to sell stuff. Catch 22. Well as far as I’m concerned the onus is on them to produce something that actually has value - like a good module.

Why do we use them?

• Marketing hype?

• Sunk cost fallacy?

• At some base level we believe that teams of TTRPG scientists have sat down meticulously testing all the rules to ensure their perfection, and that if the game does or doesn’t allow for a specific ability then it must be for good reason. Therefore when the new book is released that has rules for blowing your nose, we go wild because our PCs have had blocked sinuses for weeks and this is just what we’ve been waiting for. Picture the scene: “You look down at your tissue, make a DC12 Religion check to determine if you see the face of God”.

Why are they bad?

• Rules expansion books are mega expensive, and they don’t hold their value when you’ve decided that you don’t need them anymore.

• Because they have to justify their £50 price point, these books pad in pages and pages of unnecessary complication to their rules, which makes the total system less elegant and slower in play.

• They create a culture that says you’re only allowed to do the thing if the rules specifically say that you can.

What is the alternative?

If the system is any good then it should have a core rules language that is easy to understand and widely applicable. The 5e game system is actually an example of this - roll a d20, add modifiers and score higher than a DC to do the thing.

As GMs you need to throw off the shackles of looking to rules supplements for rulings for new things, instead you can use the existing rules language to house rule any situation.

If you want to see how other GMs have handled a situation, the web is full of blogs and videos with free content. For example, check out my stuff on inventory management.

5) Pre-Planning Solutions

I used to do this when I started out GMing. It’s part of that same video game mentality that dictates that everything should be balanced. Eugh.

So for example, you’re doing this when you put a chasm between the players and their goal, and also a tree that is partially fallen, that would span the gap if only the players gave it some encouragement.

Why do we use them?

• We pre-plan solutions because we’re obsessed with the idea that the game should be “balanced”. Video games have taught us that all problems have one solution that was designed by the developers and we carry this thought process over to TTRPGs as well.

• We cling to the hope that if the solutions pan out the way we design, then the game will go the direction we envision. Then there won’t be any difficult moments at the table where we have to think on our feet.

Why are they bad?

• By restricting all problems to only those that we can think of a solution to, we’re limiting our own creative expression as a GM.

• Your problems tend to lean to all having the same solution.

• It makes session planning a lot more like hard work if you have to stop every time you introduce a conflict to verify that it has a solution.

• If all problems have to be solved the way you intended, then the players have no agency. That’s a boring experience.

What is the alternative?

Trust your players to find a way, and be prepared to say yes to it.

That’s good GM advice right there - Default to yes, unless there’s a very good internal consistency reason not to.

Whilst we’re at it, throw off the shackles of expecting everything to go the way you designed - no plan survives contact with the enemy, so learn to embrace the chaos of thinking on your feet. Use random tables if you need on the spot inspiration for what the next challenge should be.

conclusion

We got there! I sure hope I didn’t lose any loyal readers with these two frankly quite ranty posts, but sometimes you just gotta vent, ya know? I promise that this is all good advice, and although none of it should be taken as 100% applicable 100% of the time, you should use your judgement and I reckon your games will improve.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

These 2 Expensive GM Crutches are Actually Traps, I Have Alternatives

Ahoy there, welcome aboard. I’m feeling spicy today so it’s time to drop some meta disruptive truth bombs.

I’m absolutely swimming against the tide here, so some of you won’t agree with this post, and that’s A-OK because we’re still friends and one of us will change our mind eventually as we grow and become better GMs for it, and then we shall fondly look back upon this post from a position of supreme transcendence and inner harmony. Zen.

As it is written, shall it be so.

Lets start with defining terminology. What do I mean by crutches and traps?

Well, a crutch is simply something that you introduce to make a task easier, and you should - seeking crutches is 100% the right thing to do. For example, a GM screen is a crutch because it can give the GM helpful improv prompts and reminders for key rules.

A trap however is something that initially appears to be solely beneficial, but not only does it create a dependency, it also has a hidden detrimental effect on your game, such as a GM fudging dice rolls to help their players, leading to a game suffering for its lack of stakes or player agency (told you I was feeling spicy).

1) Miniatures

Minis are cool, I like to collect them, I like to paint them, I like to use them in miniature war games. I totally get the appeal here.

Why do we use them?

• Minis allow the GM to relax their descriptions of monsters - you don’t need to give a massive description if players can just see the mini, right?

• Minis allow us to demonstrate where the actor is on a battle map.

• Minis look cool, they create more of a spectacle.

Why are they bad?

• Minis are expensive, difficult to store, and take a long time to paint.

• Minis tend to limit our encounters to the models that we have in our collection, and that we have brought with us to the game. This means that if we want to improv an encounter mid game that we don’t have minis for then we’ve got a problem.

• It also means that players may see your minis before the encounter, and then know what’s coming.

• When players pour hours of effort into a mini, that creates a conflict of interest for the GM. No one wants to be the a$$hole that kills the character that Billy has spent the last 2 weeks painstakingly preparing.

What is the alternative?

Tokens. Generic tokens. Sly flourish did a great service to the community with these and they work perfectly, because rather than needing a specific token for a goblin, you can use the hooded face token. Got a big brute? Cool, use the token in the armoured helmet. Being attacked by a group of beasts? Use the animal skulls.

Not only that, but each token within a group is lettered, so that players can say “I want to attack goblin C” instead of trying to work out which goblin they mean.

On top of this:

• They’re robust.

• Easy to store

• Cheap and easy to replace

• You don’t need many

• They’re multi purpose

Image credited to Sly Flourish

I’m planning on making and selling a set of my own soon, subscribe to the Mailer of Many Things, my monthly newsletter if you want to be kept up to date about when they’re available.

2) Automation Tools

When I was first starting out with 5e I found the character creation process so complicated that a tool like D&D Beyond was really useful as it took players through the process of character creation step by step, and did all the calculations for modifiers behind the scenes. Then the developers sold it to a company whose name might rhyme with Lizards Ate Your Toast, and the enshittification began.

But it’s not just D&D Beyond this applies to. Many digital toolsets such as virtual tabletops (VTTs) have these same issues whenever they have processes that script elements together.

Why do we use them?

• Many processes in TTRPGs are complicated, scripted automation allows us to focus on the fun role play instead without burdening the players with having to understand the behind the scenes mechanics of the game.

• They stop us forgetting about important mechanics.

Why are they bad?

• They’re very expensive. At time of writing, D&D Beyond can cost over $70 for a monthly subscription over a single year.

• If the GM wants to homebrew some new mechanical effects on the spot, these tools either do not allow for that, or they force the game to grind to a halt whilst the GM deciphers a complicated process to integrate their ideas into the system.

• Heaven forbid if you trigger an automated action by mistake. Automation tools frequently script a string of effects into motion that need carefully unpicking. For example, if you mistakenly roll to fire a gun in Alien RPG, that might subtract ammo. If you miss, it may trigger a stress roll, which triggers a panic roll, which may fail, then that might automatically alter your PCs stats.

What is the alternative?

I don’t mean this to sound dismissive, but simply get everyone to learn how the game works so that they can perform the games processes manually.

• You should use your first session to teach everyone the game and help them all build characters.

• If the game has really obtuse processes, play a simpler game. “Complicated” rarely equates to “better”. In fact, complicated games are a sure sign of bad design. And I’m a poet and I didn’t know it.

• Use game agnostic VTTs like Owlbear Rodeo which have a free tier, and do not contain scripted automations.

Conclusion

Phew! This is a longer post than I thought it’d be. I’ll discuss Player Facing Maps, Planned Outcomes, and Rule Expansion Books in a later post, this text will be linked if I’ve written it yet.

I hope these first two traps disguised as crutches have been eye opening for you, and that you’re able to kick the habit using the alternatives I’ve proposed. If you have additional alternatives, why not join the discussion on Bluesky?

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

campaign modules drag on, run episodic games instead

Yo. Before I begin, this article makes a critical point about modern TTRPG campaigns, and I’m drawing on my lived in experience to do so.

So dear reader, I don’t know about you, but I think that there’s a cultural expectation that RPG campaigns should go on for months - I’ve ran a few myself over the years this way, and despite them starting out strongly, 5+ sessions in, I start to find myself losing interest and I suspect that my players do too. Do you think that’s a common experience? I think it might be.

That got me speculating as to why, and I have conclusions. I also think that Episodic play might be the solution.

Event Based Campaigns

Campaigns in the modern “I just picked up a module for my game and it’s the size of a university text book” sense often follow a predefined interactive story. They’re “event based”, which means they’re formatted so that ‘this’ happens, and then ‘this’ happens, and then “this” happens, and it’s all packed with filler between these set story beats.

D&D 5e literally trains DMs to run games like this with it’s various linear starter sets and modules.

I theorise that running campaigns this way also demonstrates to your players that they should expect to be passive consumers of whatever you have planned for the evening, rather than lead actors with agency, driving their own experience.

For example, Lost Mines of Phandelver is often considered a great module for 5e, and indeed it’s first two chapters are very enjoyable as quasi one shot experiences, both can be completed in an evening and both are simple enough so that the players know what they’re doing - Rescue Sildar Hallwinter from the Goblin Cave, and save Phandalin from the tyranny of the Red Brands respectively.

However, when the third act begins, the story introduces a number of tangents - the game opens up and the players are expected to investigate Phandalin themselves to identify adventure opportunities and follow whatever path they like. Only… we’ve just spent the last couple of sessions very obviously pointing at the objective and saying “this is where the adventure goes next”, and now, without warning we whip the training wheels off the railroad and expect the players not to fall over? It’s a big ask.

Inevitably this results in a whole lot of nothing, to recap - the players have been primed to believe that the DM is going to hit them over the head with the next quest, and instead they’re just being fed a series of small off-plot hooks about things going on in the wider world. Analysis paralysis kicks in, and the session slows down to a crawl. Engagement takes a hit.

Losing the plot

If the players are expected to engage enthusiastically with prewritten story beats, then it needs to be focused - like a one shot. In fact, in one shots I think pre-defined stories work really well because the players get a satisfying hook and resolution all whilst they still have interest.

Contrast that against the real time gap between sessions in Event Based Campaigns where the players and GMs can lose track of plot threads and hooks, and questions like “I don’t know what’s going on?” or “Why are we going over here again?” start creeping into play. Not to mention how it becomes increasingly difficult to have each session end on a cliffhanger and start with a bang!

I do believe that this is inevitable too - almost by definition, in large event based campaigns that take months, the plot, the players and GMs will lose focus, and that will damage the game.

Again in LMoP, by the time everyone has adjusted to the total change of pace and investigated the Thundertree and Old Owl Well tangents in the third act, that’s been maybe 4 or 5 sessions. That could easily be about 2 months in real time! Of course everyone has forgotten about the central premise surrounding Gundren Rockseeker, the Black Spider, and Wave Echo Cave!

Sandbox play

Sandbox play is something we often hear about, and it’s something I wish I could get to work correctly, but I think it requires everyone to fully buy in to an exploration focused game up front. Essentially it places the onus on the players to explore and find their own adventure, and the GM has no sense of what’s going to happen more than one session in advance because the game’s narrative is driven by whatever the players discover and are interested in pursuing.

However, games like 5e fight against this with no real mechanics to support exploration, and plenty of mechanics that actively nullify the challenge that exploration should present. These all combine to make a 5e sandbox game quite the hard sell.

Conversely, if everyone at the table is up for this type of game, and you’ve got a game engine that supports it, then I think that sandbox style play is one solution to the problem of campaign games losing momentum, because there’s no overarching plot to lose track of, and the players have 100% agency over the direction of the game.

I should note, I do not think you can “sandboxify” a linear module. It’s got to be one or the other to maintain player expectations - either the campaign has predefined story beats that the players expect to receive, or the players expect to drive their own story. Any combination of the two creates a contradiction in expectations, and leads to unsatisfying games. Trust me, I’m guilty of this and it doesn’t work.

Episodic Play

OK, I firmly believe that there’s nothing wrong with predefined story beats, and in fact my only criticism of this style is that it’s easy to lose interest when it goes on too long, and this is where episodic play comes in.

Episodic play is best thought of as a series of one shots, kind of like a pre Netflix TV show, where it is understood that a suitable chunk of time has elapsed between each loosely connected episode. In this new zeitgeist, BBEG’s rarely last longer than a couple of sessions, and neither do plots.

It’s a style particularly suited to games where the content is clearly defined up front and a clear resolution is available after just one or two sessions. For example, I have an ongoing Call of Cthulhu game that works like this - the players all know that they’re part of an investigative agency, and when we want to play, I offer them up a choice of one shots that I’m interested in running.

When it comes to game time, I give them some background to say how long has passed since the last adventure, and point out any relevant things that might have happened off screen, then I reiterate what this adventure is about and throw them straight into the action.

When run in this way, I find episodic play has huge advantages:

• Each session starts with a clear hook and players can jump straight into the action and wrap up with a satisfying conclusion.

• Players with conflicting schedules can drop in and out from one game to the next without disrupting the verisimilitude.

• As a GM, you can explore a wide variety of themes, locations, and even BBEGs without being tied to a rigid continuous storyline. You can even seamlessly integrate published one shots.

• Players can try new PCs or revisit old favorites whenever they like.

• PCs don’t have plot armour anymore, and will be played according to these stakes.

• Players get to choose the type of session they want to play next.

• You can even play different games altogether between episodes, there’s nothing complicated to remember regarding a plot so there’s no harm in it.

There is a potential downside though - depending on your groups availability. In order to get a satisfying story in, I find that you have to set aside 5 or 6 hours of play. Of course you can break it up into smaller sessions, but then we run the risk of us all losing the plot and the focus, so perhaps be prepared to play for longer, but less frequently.

Conclusion

If you have GM burn out, or the game lacks focus, or if you just want to try lots of new TTRPGs or adventures, then you should try running episodic style games. You can even use this as a low barrier to entry way of getting new players involved, or for converting players into GMs!

Please reach out with your opinions if you have them, I’m always interested in what you have to say. I’m on Bluesky or you could use my contact form.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

Using time as ttrpg currency to press urgency

Hey there, I’ve got a bit of a crazy idea in my head. A few months ago I watched a sci-fi movie called “In Time” starring Justin Trousersnake. It was OK to be honest, the hook was that in a dystopian future traditional currency is replaced with ‘life-time’.

The way this worked, upon birth people were augmented with a system that stopped them biologically aging at the point of early adulthood, but at that exact transitional moment, a clock on their wrist starts ticking backwards, counting down the rest of their lifespan.

This life-time as it’s known, is then traded as a currency, your wages are paid in life-time, and you buy your food and pay your rent with life-time.

The film was attempting to make a very blunt point about the modern low tax, low regulation, free-market Western economy, so of course - this situation empowers those that are ahead to get further ahead. It leads to the lower classes getting paid poverty wages forcing them to turn to loan sharks, gambling and criminal activities to survive.

As far as the film’s story goes, life-time creates frenetic pressure on Mr. Trousersnake as he’s literally in a race against time to save his mum, the girl, and the entirety of society from the evils of cAPiTaliSM.

Using real timers in games

OK, carpark that for a second, because now I’m going to talk about Shadowdark RPG and then rein it all back together again.

There’s a cool mechanic in Shadowdark whereby whenever you light a torch, you set a timer going on your phone for 60 minutes. At the end of the timer, the torch goes out. This serves to keep the urgency up and stop the players from becoming too cautious, it encourages them to take creative risks and makes the game much more action packed.

It’s method contrasts against OSR D&D which tries to solve the same problem, but it instead measures the passage of time abstractly using “dungeon turns” as 10 minute blocks per round of player actions (Modern D&D doesn’t bother with any of this, and just encourages hand waving it away).

While Shadowdark’s real-time method isn’t perfect, since the flow of in-game time rarely matches real-world time, it feels more organic and immersive. Traditional dungeon turns require conscious discipline to do right, and can easily feel rigid and boardgame-like, requiring bookkeeping that can bog down gameplay.

All that said, on balance, if you’re used to abstracting anyway, using real timers won’t break verisimilitude, and the Shadowdark method works well.

OK, so what’s the big idea Jimmi - this blog is meant to be about getting to the point?

OK, OK, sheesh. You’ve probably put two and two together by now, or read the title of this post, so I’ll get to the point.

In sci-fi games, what if we applied ‘life-time’ to track player character wealth? You could have them set a timer on their phone which you could add to and subtract from manually as the situation required.

Players could steal life-time from enemies or have it stolen from them. They might raid a bank where dormant life-time is stored on USB-style devices or loan time to desperate NPCs.

My theory is that, like in Shadowdark, that this would drive the player activity and create a sense of urgency at the table, effectively getting rid of those sessions where everyone mulls around with analysis paralysis.

As a bonus, it’d also take care of having to manually account for the weight and amount of your character’s currency!

Conclusion

Using life-time in this way feels like it could be a game changer, but I’ve not tried it myself yet, so I’m going to integrate it into future games of Mothership to see how I get on with it. Mothership specifically seems like a good fit to me, since the tone of the game is all dystopian future and economic horror anyway, but you might be able to bake it into your fantasy games - magic is a thing! Get in touch if you have any thoughts about it. I’m on Bluesky or you could use my contact form.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

These are the best death rules for your rpg

…in my opinion

Before we get started, I want to be straight with you. This post contains links to my new online zazzle store - tldr: I designed a mug… because I’m peculiar and I think it’s funny. You don’t need to buy the mug, if you like these death rules, just use your own.

Oh, whilst I’m writing disclaimers, this D&D house rule of mine is inspired by the death rules in Mothership 1e, which is a fantastic little game by Tuesday Knight Games.

setup

You are going to need an opaque mug, cup or similar vessel, and you’re going to need a handful of d20s.

how to use the best death rules

The moment a player character goes down in battle, you take a d20 and you hide it under the mug. You put the mug out on the table for all to see. For every player turn that the character remains “down” you hide another d20 under the mug, this is important, so don’t forget!

At this point, no one knows the status of the character, all we know is that the longer they’re down, the more dice they’re getting, and the worse their odds of survival. Feel that tension baby!

The spicy bit

When another character goes to revive the downed character, be it during or after battle, using a spell or just a stabilising action, that’s when the fun begins.

The player making the revive action first shakes the mug, and reveals the d20s within. Read them as follows, with later conditions superseding earlier ones:

Condition 1) If at least 3 dice show a result of less than 11, the character is dead.

Condition 2) If any dice show a result of natural 1, the character is dead.

Condition 3) If any dice show a result of natural 20, the character is alive. (This overrules condition 1)

Condition 4) If multiple dice show results of 1 and 20, they cancel each other out. (This overrules conditions 2 and 3)

If the character is dead, the revive action fails.

Why do this?

Characters die, and the moment should be a glorious tension dripping swan song of nail biting action! Standard D&D rules (for example) rob you of this because everyone at the table knows your exact condition at all times, so there’s no need to rush over to cast healing word on you if you’ve already rolled 2 public successes on your death saves.

With my rules, You could be dead on turn 1. You could be dead even if they cast healing word on you immediately. The only thing players know for sure is that the longer they leave you face down in the dirt, the greater the odds are that you’ve stabbed your last goblin. Also, other than a natural 20, there is no way to ‘self stabilise’.

This creates a beautiful sense of urgency at the table, suddenly, someone going down is a cause for massive alarm that requires an immediate response. All the while, waiting patiently, the downed player has no idea if it’s already too late, sitting there grinning with anticipation, half imagining their next character…

About that mug I mentioned…

Because I’m peculiar, I thought it would be funny to actually make a specific mug for this purpose, so I designed one using royalty free art and stuck it up on Zazzle. “The Mug Of Death” amuses me greatly, and it has the best death rules laid out on it.

The Mug of Death
by DomainOfManyThings

I know what you’re thinking, and to respond your very reasonable question: The image on the mug is intentionally upside down, because the mug is meant to be flipped over during play to hide the dice. When it is correctly oriented, everyone will be able to read the image as:

If you want one here’s the link to buy one from Zazzle (your transaction is entirely with them). I get a kickback from them, and it helps me keep the lights on.

But seriously (and I cannot stress this enough), just use a mug you have kicking around in your kitchen instead! Unless you’re peculiar too of course, in which case thank you very much in advance.

Conclusion

So that’s it, use these death rules to make character’s going down a spicier occasion, and then bask like a sea lion on the rocks of tension it creates!

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

Combat in Mothership rpg really doesn’t have to be complicated

The Alexandrian did a piece a couple of months back about combat in Mothership 1e, and how it’s a little confusing with the rules as written. It seems that there’s some discrepancy between the core books about the exact process.

Specifically, the ‘Player’s Survival Guide’ has a Violent Encounters section which indicates that all rolls are made player facing - that is, the players roll for their check and the monsters automatically succeed if the players fail.

This contrasts against the ‘Unconfirmed Contact Reports’ book, which serves as a kind of Monster Manual, whereby the monsters are given Combat and Instinct stats which imply that the Warden rolls for monster combat.

Having scoured the official Discord for interpretations, I’ve discovered that the author, Sean Mccoy, prefers the player facing method and merely presents the other option (perhaps somewhat confusingly) as a choice.

So how does the player facing method work exactly?

As I understand it, the way it’s supposed to work all combat is simultaneous. Get rid of your D&D baggage about every character having their own turn, in this, the Warden begins by telegraphing the monsters action:

Warden: “The monster starts hurtling down the corridor towards Tommy, it’s going to violently pin you to the ground“

Then the players say what they’re all going to do in response. Now, they aren’t limited to doing actions that would nullify the monsters telegraphed attack, they can do whatever they want within the boundaries of 1 move and 1 action, but for the sake of Tommy, it’s probably a good idea:

Tommy: “Can I dive down the laundry shoot off to my side?“

Then the Warden has to decide if what Tommy is doing automatically succeeds, or if he wants him to roll. For the record, I’d let him auto succeed because Mothership is supposed to reward clever play over last resort dice rolling.

Warden: “Great, Tommy dives down the laundry shaft just as the monster pounces, missing you by inches…“

The key thing to remember with this is that the players can’t do actions that would take an amount of time greater than the amount of time implied by the monsters telegraphed attack. This is one of those things that everyone can police at the table quite easily. After one round like this, the Warden needs to decide if combat continues or not. If so, rinse and repeat!

Doesn’t sound particularly complicated, what’s the fuss?

Bringing me back to the Alexandrian then. Reading between the lines, Justin’s principle issue seems to be with what I refer to as “GM Conflict of Interest“. This is where a GM has that awkward internalised battle between executing the most tactically advantageous move for this allegedly deadly monster, or giving the PC a fighting chance and pulling your punches.

Mothership exaggerates this phenomenon because the monsters don’t have to roll to see if their attacks succeed, which means that the Warden is pretty much directly choosing whether or not to put the PC in a ‘save or die’ position.

Fortunately, I believe there is a solution to this problem. If we look to Free League’s Alien RPG, they have a system whereby the monsters roll against a table to see what their close combat action will be, and these results generally range from nothing, to panic inducing, to trapping, to mild, heavy, and fatal attacks.

We can incorporate this into Mothership. At the point where the Warden telegraphs threat, (unless it seems obvious to them what the monster should do next) they first roll against a table and then interpret the results given the situation. The result will be the threat that is telegraphed.

Sorted, no more GM Conflict of Interest - the dice gods have decided.

Did you whip up a little table for us then Jimmi?

You can bet your sweet potatoes I did! Without further ado, I give you the Monster Action Decision Table:

| d10 | Telegraphed action

| 1 | Monster withdraws

| 2 | Temp withdraw / Setup ambush

| 3 | Force a save

| 4 | Flip the terms of engagement

| 5 | Force a panic check

| 6 | Trap someone

| 7 | Light attack

| 8 | Medium attack

| 9 | Heavy attack

| 10 | Fatal / Signature attack

It’s worth giving a bit of an explanation for some these:

“Temp withdraw / Setup ambush“ as opposed to running away, the monster feigns a retreat, and if pursued it pounces from the shadows!

“Flip the terms of engagement” means to fundamentally alter the nature of the combat scenario to make it more advantageous for the monster, for example, turn out the lights or spray acid blood all over the floor.

“Trap someone” can mean pinning someone down, grappling onto them, or simply cornering them as you slowly advance, mandible jaw dripping with vile intent…

“Fatal / Signature attack“ in the context of a Xenomorph, this would be using it’s wicked little inner mouth to perform a fatal head bite. This result will clearly vary from monster to monster, and environment to environment. Maybe the 3 headed dog shoves you off a cliff?

The “light”, “medium”, and “heavy” attacks respectively will also depend on the monster in question, to calculate their damage I’d reduce each damage potential by a third. So starting with the Heavy attack with the maximum damage potential as written in your module, say 3d10 if that’s what it was, that’d mean I’d make Medium attacks be 2d10, and Light’s would be 1d10

Conclusion

What do you think? Simply take advantage of your dice to remove the headache of GM Conflict of Interest, and fix the biggest problem with Mothership’s combat!

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

the pip system is the best inventory management solution for your RPG

…In my opinion

The Pip System as I use it is broadly lifted from Mausritter by Isaac Williams, which is a brilliant little D&D adjacent fantasy RPG starring mice as heroes against the evil forces of Rats, Frogs and Cats. Check it out, it’s won awards and stuff!

pip system Setup

By default, each player character should have ten item slots. You can easily just represent this as empty rows on a list. If the player buys a better bag for their character, give them 15 item slots instead.

On the right hand side of each row, you should have three empty circles drawn in pen, known as “pips”. Players mark or rub out the insides of the pips with a pencil to represent the abstract quantity or quality of the given item.

This way, each row will contain an item with 1, 2, 3, or 0 pips filled in. These amounts of pips can represent abstract quantities and qualities.

The more pips are marked, the better the situation is.

How to use the Pip System

Consumable items can stack, so that one item slot might carry multiple arrows, rations, spell components, or whatever. However the amount of things in the stack is abstracted to either lots, plenty, a few, or none, according to its pips. Never fall into the trap of allowing your players to place an actual granular value against an item as it undermines the system.

In otherwise exactly the same abstract way, non-consumable items don’t stack, but they can deteriorate, like swords or armour getting damaged with use. So such an item might be in perfect, good, bad, or destroyed condition represented accordingly by its pips.

The key message is that the quantity or quality of the item in the stack is represented by how many adjacent pips are filled in.

Depreciation

After a battle, for any item that saw some use during the battle, roll a d6, on a result of 1-3 reduce the pips of that item by 1. This is called “rolling for depreciation”. 

Outside of battle, anytime someone uses an item on a per use basis, roll for depreciation again.

In this way, player characters will find their swords starting to chip, their shields breaking with overuse, and their arrow and potion supply dwindling.

Restocking

Whenever players loot a body, they might find armour, weapons, potions, whatever. But these looted items should always be one pips worth to represent their scavenged quality.

If players buy the items from a shop, or find them in chests etc, then the items should be three pips worth.

Likewise, players can take their swords and armour to a blacksmith and have them repaired (pip restoration) for a fee.

Use my Pip System Tracker

You absolutely can (and probably should) very easily make up your own inventory sheets for this system, but if you want to support this blog, please sign up to the free Mailer of Many Things, and you’ll be given a link to my exclusive premade A5 pip inventory sheet, as well as receiving occasional news round ups from this site and the broader tabletop news ecosystem.

You’ll notice the additional sections for currency and pocket items on my inventory sheet - I basically allow for infinite coins to be carried, and as many tiny items as your player can justify fitting in their characters pockets.

For most forms of treasure that players are likely to encounter on their adventures, I like to apply some abstraction and stack them together under “valuables” on the main sheet, the pips in this instance indicate the value of your row of valuables. Once a row of valuables hits three pips, if you pick up some more, it’s time for a new item row of valuables! Players won’t know exactly how much a given row of valuables is until they sell it at a shop for currency, and that can be up to the GMs discretion.

This way, for most types of treasure that players encounter, they will still need to weigh up if it’s worth using up an item slot for.

Why Use the pip System?

You might have noticed that I gave away the juice immediately with this blog post, but for anyone who’s interested in the reasoning and theory, read on, dear reader!

Granular Inventory Systems Slow Everything Down

Contemporary official D&D suffers from a really bad inventory system, it asks players to continually be adding and subtracting literal weights of items using the near globally rejected Imperial System of measurement.

Using granular weights and measurements to track inventories further places burden on the DM to either invent an appropriate weight for things on a per item basis, or it asks them to stop the game and look up a list somewhere to get the weight of something.

This is painful, and unless you have a kink for accounting, I can’t imagine anyone ever sticking with it in favour of following the conventional wisdom of just hand-waving the system altogether and playing by “feels”.

Hand-Waving Inventory Systems Can Undermine the Game 

One of the three key pillars of D&D is exploration, and inventory is a major part of what makes exploration interesting and consequential, it creates a good problem for players to try and solve. Intrepid explorers should be asking:

• Do I have the right equipment for the job?

• Do I have enough food and water to keep going?

• Is my torch going to last?

• Is my gear going to last?

• Have I got enough arrows?

• How much should I sacrifice to be able to carry away more loot?

In addition to this, without good inventory management you have no consistent system to track the deterioration and consumption of your stuff. The logical conclusion from this is that you’ll never need to spend your loot to replace said stuff.

Now your game economy is ruined, players can just collect infinite amounts of gold without needing to spend any meaningful amounts of it, which begs the question; What is the motivation to go on adventures to collect more?

Game designers have tried to answer this by inventing subsystems of varying complexity for buying keeps and businesses as a way to try and get you to spend. It’s like they casually forgot that D&D is about running around having heroic adventures, not managing your property portfolio!

I jest of course, people do actually enjoy the power fantasy of having their dudes owning a keep or similar in D&D and that’s all well and good*, so I guess the point I’m trying to make is that the game shouldn’t have to rely upon this in order to have a game-functional economy.

conclusion

So that’s it, in the Venn-diagram of granular and abstract inventory management systems for TTRPGs, the Pip System sits nicely in the middle, occupying a best of both worlds position which supports players making interesting and impactful choices without forcing anyone to perform boring accounting tasks.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.

*My own D&D character, Mendagg, is a Dwarf cleric-come-chef who wants above all else to own a pirate ship that he can convert into a floating restaurant. It’s gonna have a mahoosive shark jaw above the entrance and it will serve the finest dishes from across the land - he’s even been collecting recipes on his adventures.