Deathtrap Lite: the Keep on the Borderlands Principle

When I set out to build Deathtrap Lite, one of the core ideas I had in designing the game was that I wanted it to be compatible with most TSR-era D&D modules and OSR adventures on the market, while still being mechanically distinct.

Inspired by a video from Questing Beast, I made one of my rubrics "Can I still play The Keep on the Borderlands with this?" If the answer became"No." I adjusted until it could.

The whole point of the exercise was to make a game that was built on a particular mechanic, just to see if I could: a player-facing one based on an evolution of the Taps & Tankards simple skill system and Stephen Smith's World of Weirth adjustments to it, but what would be the point if my readers, who are mostly an OSR crowd couldn't use it, after all?

I also was curious to see if there is a market for OSR-comaptibke non-D&D games.

How I Designed SKills in Deathtrap Lite

 I'm going to spend the next few articles talking about Deathtrap Lite. This little OSR game was my personal passion project in 2021. 

When we started the World of Weirth campaign, Stephen Smith was looking for a scalable skill system that would allow him to determine the outcome of events without relying on the somewhat "pro-PC" skewed skill system of Low Fantasy Gaming. He adopted a fairly straightforward system from the old blog Taps and Tankard. He adjusted the difficulty levels inherent to that system and added a system for skills to grow as the PCS use them, rather than as they levelled up.

 In practice, however, we found that the players were avoiding tasks that would require rolling using the system if they could. My fellow players found that there was some lack of clarity in the rules. Stephen invited me to write a proposal as how I would rewrite and rejig the system so that the players would be more comfortable using it, which I did in a matter of a few hours. But that got me thinking about how I could build a whole role-playing game system out of it...

This is where Deathtrap Lite came from, tweaking an existing skill system into something new and flexible. I'm going to go over the basics of the system with you here.

Wreck

Q: How do you make God laugh?

So, after I had the audacity to post my plans to release a new game last week, my kids finally gave me the second of the two bugs that I had been nursing them through. And while it made my poor little guys cranky and uncomfortable, it flat-out tried to murder me. But, after a week of agonizing pain, I am back to creating.

And I have finally got a draft up of Wreck for your consideration.

Wreck is the game component of my Eternal Ocean & Wreck combination project. I have intentionally separated them in such a way that you could just use the setting with any system, but I wanted one readily available with all the material necessary to bring it to life as well. One that was based on a simple, fast open engine that I could easily adapt to my needs without reinventing the wheel.

Deep Dives: Eternal Ocean, Wreck, and Midnight Zone

 A little over a week ago, my son brought a nasty case of influenza into the house. No sooner had they recovered from it than some kind of norovirus followed suit. I have spent the last eleven days caring for two little kids who were perpetually in purge mode. It has left me little time for creative projects.

What time I have had has been pretty thematically inspired.

Octonauts C 2012 Silvergate Media, based on the Children's books by Meomi

Over those weeks I have been dosed heavily with cartoons. My oldest will voraciously consume anything related to deep-sea exploration, and so I have probably re-watched the entirety of Octonauts twice over. I've also consumed nearly two seasons of a cartoon I had not heard of before but thoroughly enjoyed entitled The Deep about a family of deep-sea explorers looking for the sunken ruins of Lemuria. It would make a hell of a campaign.

The Deep is C 2015 Technicolor SA based on the Graphic Novels by Tom Taylor

Welcome to the Deathtrap Year 2 in Review

 Two years of W2tDT already?! Wow, the time has really flown! I am still enjoying this passion project of mine.

Big Projects

The Cyclopedia

I built a database of helpful OSR rules I call the Deathtrap Rules Cyclopedia that is updated very sporadically.

Crawling the Purple Isles

In the autumn of 2021, I started a project inspired by Tale of the Manticore: I am running a solo game of BECMI D&D with a few mods from The Dozen Dooms set in The Islands of the Purple-Haunted Putrescence. I've been blogging lurid, pulpy fiction based on it on another blog. I call it Crawling the Purple Isles.

This is a series that is definitely not safe for work. However, I use it to share tips and observations on solo gaming, campaign design, and DMing as I go.

Campaign Worlds

I have built three campaign worlds with detailed primer documents and discussed them as part of a series on world-building 

The Aldrune setting is designed for Medieval Romance and is set by default to use Castles & Crusades, although any AD&D or expanded OD&D system will work with practically no conversion.  I may yet try transitioning to Lion & Dragon one I finally get my hands on its corebook.

The setting is has incredibly detailed religions and pantheons in order to create a world and captures the transition between Paganism and Christianity in Europe and the transition between the middle ages and the early modern period at the same time. I use it for my home game.

Xen is more of a surreal sword and sorcery setting with a lot of Science Fiction accents. I am currently running two parallel campaigns in it using strict time tracking and I'm considering trying to run using actual one-to-one time. I'm also currently recruiting for a third campaign run in parallel to the other two. Xen draws heavily on Barsoom, the Dying Earth and Final Fantasy.

Xen uses a lightly tweaked version of Swords & Wizardry, with elements from my Oversix System. It is focused on diagetical ("rulings over rules") play over heavy use of dice.

The Golden Heresy is a setting I started as a doodle here on the blog. It is a sword-and-planet setting where a legion of plane-hopping spies break into fantasy worlds and destroy the barriers of reality so that their master and his legions can invade with heavily-armed starcraft and slay the local gods to free the people from the lies of false deities. It is a setting built with hopping multiple worlds in mind.

Also designed with Swords & Wizardry in mind, The Golden Heresy draws heavily on D&D3.5e psionics, Planescape, and Gamma World.

Adventures

I have moved away from pamphlet adventures to longer format adventures.

In the Summer, I released Maze of the Screaming Heads: a metaphor for RPG Twitter, the PCs must navigate a maze of samey chambers where it is easy to get lost while insane undead heads shout, scream, and rave at each other, threatening to drive the characters violently insane. Escape requires facing a blob if toxic sludge, sifting truth from fiction in the heads' ravings, or making a deal with a demon price.

More recently, I participated in the OSR Supplement Jam on Itch.io, where I released The Queen of Decay for Low Fantasy Gaming using the custom ruleset for Stephen Smith's World of Wierth setting. Based on a discussion of the bizarre cover for The Princess Bride by Ted CoConis, it is a psychedelic adventure across a hallucinogenic swamp to save a princess for she is driven insane by a Necromancer that is forcing her to read the dreams of undead cultists.

Happy New Year 2022!

I am grateful for my readers, and want to say "thank you" for coming back.

In 2022 I have a lot I want to do.

• Finish Deahtrap Lite: technical issues killed my productivity in December.
• Finish a silly side project game about American soldiers fighting dinosaurs and Cthulhu cultists in 1976 in Vietnam.
• Get Midnight Zone complete.
• Finish my adventure module based on my House of Amber Lanterns planning exercise from 2019
• Draw often enough to feel confident in illustrating and releasing three DCC RPG modules I have written, but not released: Vikings on a Starry Sea, Grimki's Jewel, and Slither, Witch!
• Review my backlog of books (most already read and many played;)
• Swords and Wizardry
• Castles and Crusades
• Ryuutama
• Shadow of the Demon Lord
• Hyperborrea
• Machinations of the Space Princess
• Star Adventurer
• Goblin Quest
• Shadowdark
• The Thot Trilogy for Alpha Blue
• The Tome of Adventure Design
• Low Fantasy Gaming: Deluxe Edition
• Numenéra and my favorite supplements for it.
• I have Cha'alt: Chartreuse Shadows coming.
• I also hope to get my hands on and review the Mothership boxed set, Deathbringer and Knave 2e.
• I wouldn't mind getting my hand on Warhammer Fantasy 4e, Zweihander, & the upcoming TTRPG based on Goblin Slayer, either. 
• I have some thoughts to share on sex in TTRPGs, and keeping it fun and positive.
• I plan on doing more discussion and review of planning tools.
• I might do some short format videos to summarize older reviews.
• Crawling the Purple Isles is in need of updating, but the next set of adventures got so big, they beg a simpler format.
• I want to feature some podcasts that I love.
• I would like to try my had at podcasting again, but maybe something simpler, like a Shadow of the Demon Lord campaign.
• I have been building two campaign worlds: one for OSE / BECMI D&D and one for Castles and Crusades.  I might share them.
• The Cyclopedia could stand some extra additions.
• I hope to do my interviews and guest posts, too.
• I have been reading a lot of Appendix-N material, and I would love to offer some perspectives. 
• I want to discuss the impact of Final Fantasy and DragonQuest on TTRPGs,
• I plan on spending a couple of week's worth of articles on the GLOG.

So, in other words, I still have lots to say, and I am glad you are here to read it. If there is anything you would like to see me cover or discuss, let me know!

Why I'm Creating an Open Engine

My upcoming games Deathtrap Lite and Midnight Zone are both built on an engine I developed inspired bysome house rules created by Stephen Smith. I call it the Over Six Engine. An SRD and generic version will follow by completion of the two games I am working on. I have a stripped-down sample on DTRPG at the moment.

I intend to make Over Six an open source engine. I won't write a complex license, either. Instead, I will offer it with a CC-BY license, similar to Knave. I will provide a "Powered by Over Six" graphic that can be included on covers and promotional material, but it will be voluntary. This will let creators better get the attention of fans of the system.

Why Make a New Engine?

Honestly? Because I can. When I started the project, it was a proposed overhaul for Stephen's custom skill system. As I worked on the skill system, I saw how it could easily replace saving tbrows, magic, and exploration mechanics. I almost immediately saw how it could also replace combat and create a unified system.

I just couldn't help myself. It was almost a compulsion. I wrote the game in my spare time in a week, wrote a spin-off over a month, and now I am on a final editing pass. It has been a joy to work on.

But there is a good logical reason as well: If I write things with my own system in mind, I don't have to rely on the OGL, even if the game can use OST monster stat blocks in a pinch. It frees me from having to have a bulky, space consuming, and IP-compromising legal agreement with a third-party. How can I complain about that?

My Publishing Plan 

I'm not in a big rush. My intention is to finish my initial Player's Handbook in December. I will continue to publish articles, and hopefully have my holiday module out in the next few weeks. Once that's done I can get Deathtrap Lite Basic out.

Then I will work on Midnight Zone ultimately with a starting adventure module and GM's Guide for Deathtrap Lite. Mostly, that will be additional content and advice, and not critical to play. My Hope Is that I will get enough playtesting from the community to create a better version, and kickstart a finalized edition of Deathtrap Lite in early 2022. Quality is important to me.

I will offer anyone who bought the demo or the Basic Corebook a discount on the finalized version. 

Why Offer the Engine Openly? 

Honestly, the most useful answer to that is that I want to share. I think my system is clever, and I'd love to see what other creative minds do with it. I also want to make creating content for the system as easy as possible. A simple license that gets rid of all the guess work will make that possible.

By letting people to remix it to the genres and playstyles they like, I can curate a library of rules and content that will help make the game more flexible, adaptable, and elegant than I could have ever made it myself. 

Open Engine Month

 This month I'm going to be studying and talking about open game engines. I want to discuss some of the resources out there for someone who would like to design a game, but doesn't quite know where to start and I will be talking about the two role playing games I'm currently developing.

Along the way I will try my best to discuss intellectual property and why it's murky water when it comes to open game design.

Obviously, I can't cover every engine. But, I will be covering the d20 and OSR engines, talking a little more about Powered by the Apocalypse, discussing Mark of the Odd, as well as Forged in the Dark, Fate Core, Open d6, Open Legend, and the GLOG.

I hope to introduce my own open engine by the end of year.

Also, I will try to review some games that serve as examples of those various engines.

Solo on My Mind

The Adventuring Party from my Pacts & Blades Solo
Created using Hero Forge & Photoshop 
Hero Forge miniatures used in accordance 
With the Hero Forge EULA

I was hoping that I would have time this Summer to run and review some solo games. Back on January I ran Four Against Darkness and enjoyed it. And before that I ran several solo adventures here on the blog to playtest Lucas Rolim's excellent Pacts & Blades: Moorcockian Fantasy. My solo play of Pacts & Blades was very satisfying, I played one session on my own, one session here on my blog, and then a three-part adventure (1, 2, 3) to test out some of the material in Pacts & Blades' sourcebook, Salamandur Household.

Up to this point, I have had a strange relationship with solo games. I developed my method for running solo purely to test out game systems that were so radically different from Dungeons & Dragons that I couldn't playtest them at my regular table. I use a fusion of the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia, random Dungeons from DonJon, read with a skimming method, and whatever game I am reviewing . Or I build a dungeon using random encounter tables and a clock to test specific mechanics. 

After reviewing One Shot in the Dark, I decided to give a listen to the  Tale of the Manticore podcast. I have been binging it for a few days, and have listened to about a third of the series over the weekend. 

Creative Journaling exercises are also a topic that has come up in conversations recently, which led me to recommend Alone Among the Stars to my wife. And one of books that just hit the top of my backlog is Dungeon Crawl Solo, a book of solo play methods recommended to me by Bob V. G., a frequent reviewer of my games on DrivethruRPG. 

I also recently received copies of two of my favorite Fighting Fantasy books from my childhood as a gift, and have been playing them in fits and starts. 

And I also recently stumbled across a copy of Barbarian Prince, a solo adventure game from the early 80s I found compelling. 

Needless to say, solo adventure has been on my mind, accordingly. I've decided to try playing creatively for pleasure once in awhile. So I am going to use the blog to document what tools and methods work for me. But this, unto itself requires me to ask some preliminary questions. One of the biggest of which is "What do I hope to get out of this?"

My Upcoming Projects

For those of you who are interested in an update, I completed a 148- page manuscript for Deathtrap Lite just over two weeks ago.

When you edit your own work, however, it is easy to keep missing the same thing over and over again, so I started a second project: Midnight Zone. My idea was to create a distilled version of my Over Six Engine that was not as interested in being OSR compatible, while still using OSR-style time keeping, initiative, and NPC randomizers.

I made it into a Cyberpunk system (or it might be better called Post-Cyberpunk) so that I would be forced to go over everything with a fine-toothed comb to make sure I was consistent with the new genre. It has helped me catch a few inconsistencies, unclear rules, and typos right away.

Once Midnight Zone has a draft done, I will go back and edit Deathtrap Lite, the release an open beta for anyone will g to help me make it better. Then I will go back and update Midnight Zone with what I have learned.

I am really proud of Midnight Zone, it is strange, offbeat, and takes Cyberpunk into a very different hostile environment: the floor of the Antarctic Ocean.

So here are some screens hots to whet you whistle :