#somethinginthedark

🖤 𝕾𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖎𝖘 𝖔𝖓 𝖎𝖙'𝖘 𝖜𝖆𝖞

𝕭𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖔𝖋 𝖒𝖞 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖙 𝖎𝖙'𝖘 𝖓𝖔𝖙 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖘𝖆𝖒𝖊

𝕾𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖈𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖘 𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖒𝖞 𝖓𝖆𝖒𝖊

soooooo a while back (before last semester's classes devoured all my free time) i was doing weekly posts about my custom ttrpg system, and i REALLY want to start doing that again...

so here's a lil refresher on what i made and why i did that!

so whats the system

basically, the group i play with is super into immersive roleplay and not too fond of the whole turn-based tactics battle system that dnd has. just, too much math and way too many options... just a big time sink because everyone's more interested in building a narrative together through rp

so, i slapped together a new system based on a fork of a fork of Call of Cthulhu, and then i heavily modified it to strip down everything to be as simple as possible.

"Something In The Dark" <- new name!!!!

yes, official name now!!! suggested by one of my players, he was spot on because it so perfectly describes the vibe of the game.

basically, you're looking at 6 basic stats, called traits:

Physique, Motorics, Stealth, Mind, Rhetoric, Shivers

these line up pretty intuitively with the usual Strength, Dex, Stealth, and Intelligence stats, but the last ones get a bit weird.

Rhetoric is focused on giving you guidance on how to reach an interpersonal goal, like getting someone to calm down or trust you (as well as detecting lying and all that). that way, players can still roleplay- no rolling for deception, they actually have to lie- but they get a bit of guidance when they roll Rhetoric. like, reading people's tells, basically.

Shivers is so obviously inspired by Disco Elysium, and is the catch all for intuition, vibes, and also spooky ghosts luring you to dark rooms. it's really flexible with flavoring, i've used it for muscle memory, fortune telling, and when players want to have gut feelings about stuff. basically, when players want to get info that there's no way they could logically get, it's a shivers roll.

theming

obviously all the stat names are changed (except for stealth, i couldnt figure out a good alternate name for that one), but i hope the names evoke a kind of clinical, detached vibe, like an autopsy report.

in fact, i tried to make all the names, descriptions, and theming feel a little off and too sterile in order to build an uncomfortable vibe. the goal is to make players think of their characters

and as you can probably tell already, its heavily influenced by disco elysium and the way that game makes your stats feel so alien and weird, and the player's guide i made basically looks like the text interface from that game

i really want to share the player's guide on here, and i will at some point, but i'm constantly editing it and playtesting new stuff so that might be a ways off.

anyways, yeah! thats a refresher on what the system's deal is, i want to go and do more in depth analysis of it and talk about more mechanics, but for this week i just want to get back into the swing of posting on here with some simple overview stuff