#24xx

HARDCASE is a light-weight solo TTRPG about trying to make it to payday in space. If you're a fan of grimy sci-fi and hate corporations (or just really like Mothership, 2400, and World of Dungeons), there's a lot for you to love with it!

In less than 48 hours I'm off to Europe for the wedding of some good friends. This is an expensive time, so your support matters more than ever. I'd love if you'd check out even one of my games!

Do you like vampires and standoffs? Bad Blood is the one-shot game for you!

Prehistoric adventure more interesting? 84XX BC is about a band of outcast Neanderthals and is my most downloaded title to date!

You are an Assassin, a member of the original order of assassins: The Nizari Ismaili sect of Alamut. On all sides are enemies. You have been chosen to make them one fewer. 

My hommage to the TV series Supernatural "Carry On" using 24XX is part of this fun Supernatural TTRPG bundle. There are 50 games here for 20 USD. It is the perfect time to get some games to peruse and prep at your leisure for Halloween! 👻

This Spring, you can get every one of my games and zines for 50% off. Plus, if you buy the ENTIRE BUNDLE, you can save an extra $7!

Here's just some products on offer -

As the Crow Flies, a cozy solo journaling game about a crow leaving the nest and finding a new home.

Substitution, a sci-fi mission based game about time travelers from the future coming to our present to avert the apocalypse.

GSXX, a lo-fi sci-fantasy ttrpg about life on a generation ship between the stars, with mechs, magic, and spirits.

When you're FEELING, read this ZINE. A printable zine with ttrpg-like prompts to help you process difficult emotions.

THEME: Rules-lite Systems with Classes.

Some things to keep in mind: OSR games are stripped down to bare bones because character ingenuity (rather than brute force) is meant to take the forefront. This is why characters don’t usually have class abilities. 

What I’m hearing you ask for is something that keeps light rules, in the same way OSR systems do, but still provides a way to differentiate characters from each-other. I don’t know if all of these suggested games can be classed as OSR or NSR, but they require the same amount of creativity to push the game forward.

24XX Tides Will Rise, by Tubatic. 

A STORM IS COMING!

The crew finds themselves at a settlement preparing for a huge seasonal storm.  Using mechs like in that one movie with the aliens, or whatever you choose, help prepare the settlement to survive The Storm.  

24XX Tides Will Rise is a microgame  / oneshot designed in the style of Jason Tocci's 2400, created for submission to the 24XX Jam. 

24XX games are a distillation of OSR games, usually only about two pages or so, with dice that scale up or down in size depending on your character’s situation and aptitude. Your character will usually get a special ability related to their class, career, background, or in this version, Pilot Skill. There’s also a simplified money and gear system that gets you one or two pieces of useful items that are destined to break at some point, in order to reduce whatever harm you take. Tides Will Rise is about preparing your local settlement for an extreme weather event using giant mechs, but 24XX games could happen in nearly any setting, and are almost always deadly for your characters. If you want a quick game that you can learn and get up and running in less than 30 minutes, this is the game for you!

Hexfall, by titanomachyRPG.

You are a hyperpowered being who came into larger-than-life abilities because of a profound cataclysm. Heartbreak. Grief. The depths. Physical, emotional, multidimensional–something unlocked incredible power in you. People like you have many names across Stratus Cay, but the most common is “Diver,” a nickname derived from their affinity for falling through the Rift, either on dangerous jobs or just for fun. 

Divers’ abilities run the gamut of even the wildest imaginations, and their extreme power and durability makes many of them reckless thrillseekers. The pay is too good and the thrills too extraordinary to turn down the opportunity to go on a dive.

What will you do, falling soul?

Hexfall uses Caltrop Core, a rules-lite system that requires 3d4 and that’s it. Like many OSR games, it uses a hex map that your characters will navigate as they fall through an inter dimensional space called the Rift, their movements and obstacles determined by the roll of the dice. The characters gain tokens as they fall, which act as player currency that can affect narrative beats or navigation rolls as you play. Finally, there are 12 playbooks that you can choose to represent your character: will you be a resilient Giantborn? A liberating MotherThawed? A masterful Myconaut? Each character playbook comes with special moves that only you can do.

High Magic Lowlives, by Gem Room Games.

High Magic Lowlives is a Post-Dungeon Fantasy Tabletop RPG about wizard school dropouts who get into trouble with the Immortal Aristocracy to make coin and build their #brand. Like old school RPGs this is a game about a crew of weirdos finding subterranean vaults filled with treasure, kicking down doors, beating up guards, setting off traps, and taking home as much coin as you can carry. Like new school RPGs the mechanics are simple, drive the story forward, and don't rely on a ton of preparation in advance.

Unlike any RPG you've ever played before you can get paid for livestreaming your fight against the jack-o-lantern queen of zabraxas. Your companions would probably prefer you help them survive the fight, but they'll forgive you when you capture their critical hit for all to see.

High Magic Lowlives uses a ruleset that is a combination of Powered by the Apocalypse, Forged in the Dark, and the Black Hack. Your lowlife has 6 attributes, which could range from 0 to 3. Each character also selects a General Deal, which grants you a special ability, such as access the local library, sweet-talk computers, or gather food in unlikely places. Similar to OSR games, there are tables and tables of items that you can use for conventional and non-conventional uses, and, in step with PbtA mechanics, there are graded levels of success when it comes to hitting things with a weapon. You also have Risk Dice, which deteriorate as you use them, lending the feeling of dwindling resources as you play. If you want a game of high risk, high reward, I recommend High Magic Lowlives!

Aetherway, by Jason Tocci.

Hit the road between worlds with a black cat, a clockwork assassin, a fallen star, and a pilgrim who huffs the ashes of a dead saint. Deliver lumber to communist skeletons living on the back of a gargantuan crab. Ride a comet to a party in the skull of a cosmic god that was converted to condos.

Aetherway is a quirky, planet-hopping RPG zine, compatible with both Tunnel Goons and Troika! Use it to improvise your own adventures, as set of extra Troika! backgrounds, as a conversion guide between Troika! and Tunnel Goons rules, or a bunch of random generators for any other game of planeswalking hijinks. 

This is mostly another chance for me to talk about Troika again, because it’s a) a really funky setting, and b) a game that borrows a lot of elements from OSR-style games. You have random roll tables, backgrounds that give your characters skills and abilities, and an initiative order that leaves everything up to chance. However, you can also use Aetherway to play Tunnel Goons, which is a rules-lite game that contains much of the hallmarks of OSR. 

Planet Dungeon, by Nathan Lathroum.

Ever since birth, the dungeon is all you’ve ever known. All you’ve ever seen. All you were ever meant to see. Who built the dungeon? Is there anything beyond it? How long has the world been trapped here? You can almost smell the fresh outside air. You can almost feel the heat of the sun. You can almost taste victory. But your journey is not over yet.

Ten floors of the dungeon remain. This is all that stands between you and the mythical surface of the Aboveworld. Does it truly exist, or is it merely legend? Is there still a world beyond these walls?

Planet Dungeon is a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) designed for 3 to 5 players. This book contains all of the rules, systems, and mechanics you will need to play. Additionally, Planet Dungeon requires two regular dice for each player and a singular deck of playing cards. Be warned: Planet Dungeon is not easy, and is intended for players willing to lose.

This game uses 2d6 and a deck of playing cards. As a table, you will create the planet you live on, and select backgrounds for your characters. Each background carries with it a pre-determined set of stats and a unique ability - including the Wretched, which starts woefully bereft of any ability, but has the chance to level up dramatically the first time you reach a boss in any given session. The rooms of each dungeon are determined by a card pulled from the deck, with the suit determining the type of the room. Cards also describe your death, should it happen, as well as what the end of the story looks like, once you escape. If you like simple rules and overwhelming odds, this might be worth checking out.

Lost Eons, by David Blandy.

LOST EONS is solarpunk sci-fantasy. In Lost Eons you will emerge from the darkness into a new light, one dominated by inscrutable and terrible forces you must seek to understand. Using this guide create a post-human character, ready to face the mysteries and dangers of a far future Earth.

LOST EONS is a fast but deep toolkit. Play instant no-prep one-shots and sustained campaigns. Discover beautiful and horrifying new adventures through evocative prompts and procedural generation. This game is no-maths and instantly playable. Mashing together 24XX and Blades in the Dark, gameplay is streamlined, flexible, fast and potentially brutal. Level-up through mutation, your body changing as you evolve. Character Playbooks let you create a character in seconds, yet have limitless customisation through play.

(This is the third in my ongoing postmortems about my older games. You can find similar posts on SpeedRune here and on Patchwork World here.)

Domesday 10XX is a game about resisting the Norman invasion of England. You take the role of a dirty, grubby peasant after the nobles have failed to protect you, and you try to cause trouble for the rich, castle-building despots who have taken over.

It’s explicitly NOT a game about English nationalism or white pride. It’s about being poor and feeling helpless and deciding to do something about it.

THE SYSTEM: Domesday uses a modified version of Jason Tocci’s 24XX system. Skills and allies help you roll more and higher dice to try to reach a single target number. Failure is dangerous if not outright deadly, but you can stave off those consequences by sacrificing one of your meager possessions...or one of your relationships.

THE STYLE: The game is written in a fake “vibes first” version of Middle English inspired by the works of James Joyce, Alan Moore, and Peter Kingsnorth (along with actual Middle English, which I had to recite in undergrad). It’s full of painted illustrations mimicking illuminated manuscripts. But don’t worry! The download also includes a modern English version and a plain text file.

Here’s a pretty extensive preview: