RPGs with Kids, 2: Daring Escape!

Rock is exhausted, reeling under a curse of The Dark One. Roxley's torch is running out, sputtering in the predatory dark. Anjo is laden down with treasure, barely able to make a step without dropping something of value.

This is where we pick up session 2 of Caverns of Thracia via Into the Odd with my five-year-old, Ted.

It's simple, really. Make a big score, then get out and secure it for profit. Simple. Simple. Even my little son knew the jig was likely up when I presented the situation as such in response to his question, "what should we do now?" The party skulked back through the dark undercaverns of the jungle ruins, crossing the trapped bridge with care, and alighting on the cobbled platform where their rope hangs solitary from the pinprick of light far above in the ceiling. "We should get out of here," I offer as Roxley, when Ted asks his peers for their opinion. Ah, but the glint of hubris sprung alight in young Ted's eye as he pored over the map and saw another corridor just to the east of the party's position.

A Long Fulsiform Object, Jules Férat

RPGs with Kids, 1: Into Thracia

Here's the thing, I've played (and more often run) a lot of online RPG stuff over the years. It's great, and I don't deny how much I enjoy it. Play-by-Forum has become a bit of an artform since I started in 2015, and I rarely have a dull day since those notifications always pop up with something delightful.

I don't have a local game group and don't really have the time to go find one, so I've put off live games for a while... until now. Until now, that is, because my oldest son, Ted, turned five years old a little while back, and I thought I'd risk possible over-the-headedness by offering to run a proper dungeon delve for him. He's already a very enthusiastic storyteller, so I didn't think it would be all that big a stretch for him to get into the game.

Opting to start as simply possible, it was a toss-up for me between using Maze Rats and Into the Odd for the game, and I opted for the latter, if for no other reason but because I've been running Maze Rats for two parallel tables of Hot Springs Island over on RPGGeek.com. So, Into the Odd it was, and Ted really enjoyed rolling up some characters. I decided that I'd run Caverns of Thracia for him...

Anjo, Roxley, and Rock descend into Thracia...

Any Planet Is Earth is LIVE

Welp, after several months of writing, refinement, and relentless editing for concision, my little sci-fi game, Any Planet Is Earth, is live and available for sale at DTRPG and itch.io! To say I am pleased with it is an understatement. I am pumped! I want to give a big thank you to those who provided excellent feedback, playtesting, and inspiration to the project, and a special shout-out to Jeff Woodman who put together the evocative and brilliantly simple cover art (the little ship is my fave).

2d6 Sci-Fi d66 Tables

As I continue chugging along with Any Planet Is Earth I find myself thinking about what referee tables would actually help me when running the game. I have plenty made up at this point, and I have more to go, but I thought I'd plop out a few of the most generic for the sake of broader usability. Since d6 is the best die, and 2d6 is the best number of dice, and d66 is the best table, and Maze Rats has the best d66 presentation, I opted to go with that formatting.

An Example Crew

To follow up on yesterday's post about character generation in Any Planet Is Earth, I rolled against some tables tonight to generate a sample crew of five people for play following their respective careers. I rolled 100% randomly here, not picking services for any characters, whether initial or follow-up.

Pardon my coffee table (janky).

Any Planet Is Earth: Character Generation

After establishing intitial concept for Any Planet Is Earth, I've put together the service tables for terms served by players during character generation. You'll either roll for or select your starting service, roll 2d6 against the corresponding table, then either accrue skills or bonuses or roll against subtables for events, mishaps, and boons. In this manner I am scraping my favorite bits from the expanded Mongoose Traveller 2 career tables and stripping them of their context, allowing for players to come up with the context for their results or with help from the referee. This provides some easy worldbuilding while also setting up your character quickly with a lot of variablility.

Any Planet Is Earth: Core Rules Draft

"Any planet is 'Earth' to those who live on it." 

Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

I thought I wanted to set out to make a fantasy adventure game of my own design. I was wrong. I already held Into the Odd and (the tragically lesser known) MoldHammer up as near-perfect designs (the former with a bit more crunch than the latter [which sounds amusingly impossible]). After digging into the Electric Bastionland rules (not to mention already enjoying Mausritter, Maze Rats, and other venerable off-Odd derivative hacks), I realized that there is no fantasy design space I really care to fill. I will 100% always play or run or hack any title from that family of games.

So with few other strong contenders for genre, I turn to science fiction, which I've really always admired reading and exploring far more than fantasy literature and games of all stripes. Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Jack Vance, Orson Scott Card, and William Gibson took up (and still take up) a great deal of my reading budget, among other similar contemporaries.