Deathtrap Lite, Preview 1: The Devouring Wilds

"Coffin" by Vera Petruk; ©Vera Petruk,
Licensed through Shutterstock

As my regular readers might know, I have been working non-stop for two weeks now on my own TTRPG, which I am calling Deathtrap Lite. It started out with me trying to help my Low-Fantasy Gaming GM, Stephen Smith, revamp the alternative skill system he is using for our campaign... and I ended up writing something radically different out of it.

I have been trying to cram everything I like in both OSR and Minimalist rules systems into something a little different. It is crunchier than most modern minimalist games. At the same time, where it borrows from older OSR games, it streamlines, simplifies, and unifies everything that really worked about B/X and AD&D.

I would characterize it as light, but with more crunch than some of the indie OSR games I enjoy.

Where I am most proud of it, however, is in the places where I am making sure my own ideas are showing through, like the Wilderness Survival chapter, which has a system for managing overland travel that makes sure that no matter how tough your PCs are, trying to survive in the wilderness is potentially lethal.

I am so proud of this section, that I intend to make an advanced version of it as a sourcebook if this game is popular enough to warrant one.

So, to show you what I have been working on, I am setting down at least parts of eight chapters of my book so that you have enough to make a character, handle non-combat and non-magic tasks, and explore the wilderness using version 0.30 of the Deathtrap Lite engine. (I will confess: I am already making tweaks) You will probably find that it is not at all difficult to make it work with an OSR system. I wanted to make sure that before I shared it with you, I could give you something PLAYABLE.

You are, of course, missing out on Magic, combat, alchemy, madness, addiction, grisly wounds and healing, monsters, traps, and treasures... and three of the four PC classes here.

Grab it for free on DrivethruRPG

(I made it PWYW just in case you want to keep me caffeinated and get the game out faster.)

The Structure of the Role-playing Games

Image by Stux from Pixabay

As I have been building my own system, I find I've been thinking a lot about what goes into a role-playing game. This weekend has been exceptionally good time for helping me organize my thoughts. I was able to enjoy a one-shot game of Cha'alt run by Venger Satanis himself. I also spent Sunday night up late with some friends talking about game design as we are all at various stages of development in our TTRPGs.

And I wanted to point out an idea that I have mentioned in passing before, which is a notion of how a role-playing game is structured.

This is going to be a grounding for talking about kids' games. 

Bare Bones: Task Resolution System 

In essence all a role-playing game needs is a task-resolution engine. A roll, a card draw, or a coin flip (or drawing a Jenga brick, for that matter) to determine whether a character succeeds or fails when the outcome of their action is unclear: something to tell us where to go with the Narrative when we reach divergent paths and neither makes more logical sense.

Summer is Coming! (Gaming with Kids)

Hero Kids Warrior, Boy
by Justin Halliday
©2020 Hero Forge Games

I always work best on this blog when I have a plan in place that I have shared somewhere, so let me tell you about what I have planned for this month. This month and we'll talk about gaming with little kids.

Summer is coming, and most years for me that means road trips. Time spent at hotels trying to entertain my children. This year? It's up in the air. It depends on whether interprovincial travel is permitted at the end of June. It may be that we will be spending a lot of our summer days stuck at home trying to find a way to keep everything our sons have learned of the Year from leaking out of their heads in the heat.

And for my oldest, at least, that means role playing games. My son loves the creativity and Imagination of role playing games not a day goes by where he isn't asking to tell me a story, asking you to run him a story, or drawing a map in his Scribbler. 

At the same time, he is still a little too young to grasp of the more complex rules sets out there. Not that he hasn't tried. He enjoys playing BECMI Dungeons & Dragons quite a bit. His comfort zone his Tiny Dungeon 2e, which is light on rules and heavy on imagination. Like his dad, however, he is always game to learn a new system. And so over the last month we have been testing a number of kid oriented ttrpgs, which I will be reviewing over the course of the month. They are:

• Tiny Dungeon 2e
• Hero Kids
• First Fable
• Basic Dungeons & Dragons
• No Thank You, Evil!

And so I will be offering a review of each including a kids-eye view assessment of them.

And I have three articles planned on playing role playing games with kids, plus, if I can do so after completing Deathtrap Lite, I will put down the rules to the super-light TTRPG I created to entertain my son on walks to school.

It is my hope that by the end of the month, if you have kids to entertain this Summer, or are thinking of writing for them, I have provided you with some helpful insight. 

The Accidental Role-playing Game

Tentative inner cover page for
"Deathtrap Lite"; Art by Lady of Hats
CC-BY

Last weekend, I was chatting with Stephen Smith and the rest of the Thursday Night playtest team, and ended up discussing the task resolution system Stephen was using for Thieves in World of Weirth. After awhile, I realized that I had such a complicated idea for tweaks to his system that I needed to write it all down.

After a few hours work I returned to him not just with a tweaked skill system, I had written a whole new game engine, entirely by accident. Looking at the engine, I found myself saying things like:

"If I just use the roll this way, then I have a combat system... "

" If I make this tiny adjustment, I have a magic system..."

"If i use this tool I can keep the game simpler...""

If I turn my head and squint at an OSR stat-block, I can make this whole setup OSR Compatible..."

And I just started writing whenever my kids were keeping themselves entertained. When my little guy is napping, through Saturday Morning cartoons, and in the bathroom. And now I am just a couple of day's work away from putting out a game.

Parsing the Social Competencies of GMs

Okay, I can't help myself. For over a decade my job as a coach was built on three pillars: turning abstract goals into simple, effective plans, calling people on bullshit in a professional capacity, and teaching people social skills as simple, easily practiced procedures. 

When I wrote my last article, I went overboard on the first section and added in tips and tools for having the best impact in the social aspect of running a roleplaying game. 

It would be a shame to let that material go yo waste. So, here it is. 

Some Advice You Probably Haven't Heard About Being a Game Master

A relatively new D&D player decided to ask for some advice on running the game on Twitter. And, as I have been looking for a smarter topic than reviews with which to engage you all, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. He was getting all the usual good (& awful) advice from the rest of the Peanut Gallery, so I thought I would answer him with advice he probably wouldn't hear, and then tease it out on the

So here is some advice that you probably won't hear about being a Dungeon Master, but should.

Sourcebook Review : The Delve 2e Companion Expanded

Review: The Delve Second Edition Companion Expanded

Cover Art: Delve Second Edition Companion
Expanded ©2020 Feral Gamers Inc. 

Author: Monochrome Monkey
Publisher: Feral Gamers Inc.
Marketplace: DrivethruRPG
System: Delve 2e

The Delve Second Edition Companion Expanded is a book of additional rules and materials for Delve 2e. Delve was the first TTRPG I chose to review on this blog because it had a few clever innovations, but had gained practically no attention on the Internet. Almost to the day from when I downloaded Delve 2e, they released the expanded version of the Companion. It felt like coming full circle to make it my first review of year two of Welcome to the Deathtrap. 

Delve 2e aims to take the best of Wizards-era Dungeons & Dragons and fuse it with some of the best parts of the early Editions of Warhammer Fantasy. It then takes this strange hybrid and accentuates survival, placing it on the desolate and ruined island of Cragbarren where the PCs are castaways. It adds detailed rules on equipment degradation, unstable light sources, thirst, hunger, scavenging and an economy based on salvage and barter. I find Cragbarren reminds me of the video game Path of Exile. 

The Companion originally adds some more elements and options for players. It offers backgrounds much like Dungeons & Dragons 5e's system. Each background offers a few additional skills for a character. It also offers two new playable races Gnomes (that feel much like Dragonlance-style Tinker Gnomes), and Goblins that feel rather like Pathfinder's playable Goblin race: a race where a minority have given up Evil to try to live in the society of humans and Dwarves, but are prone to falling back on criminal activity. 

It also adds two new subclasses a Cleric subclass for Fighters and a Bard Subclass for Rogues, as both had been previously not included in Delve 2e. The classes that did not previously have spellcasting ability also now have spell progression and spell lists.

The Companion also adds a number of monsters 

Its April 2021 re-release as an expanded version includes all adventures published for Delve to-date, which include a few additional rules:

• The Dungeon of Gark the Everdead
• Lost Tower of the Unholy Shroud
• The Hunt for the Many-eyed God
• The Ruins of Wind-torn Manner
• March of the Dead
• The Orcs are Restless