Tea Wagon Games

 This busy guy is what I'm working on to be the front piece. He has the magic fire on one hand, a sword in the other, and a pet at his side. On his back is a giant bag of resources, as they are one of the main points of the game.  I may give this one a redraw later.

 I have begun to create the illustrations for Dwindle. As it is a setting agnostic set of mechanics, with a bit of a fantasy bent, I wanted the drawings, specifically the characters, to be a bit generic, and a bit whimsical. So I also needed them to be modular. I want to be able to easily add on some details to make them into something easily recognizable as a fantasy species or class. So I created these little diamond-faced, tear-drop-bodied, floating-handed characters. I think they work well for what I am doing. This week I'll highlight some drawings I've done so far. It's a Pile of Art

 Dwindle gives lots of room for both Complications and Consequences. Complications come in the form of Setbacks ( discussed in an earlier post ), and Consequences are the results of the PCs' Failures and Successes. Yes, their Successes. Often in games, we talk about Failing Forward. This is the concept that when a character fails, the plot still advances. This is great narrative advice. I suggest GMs and Players alike keep it in mind as they play. GMs because they are sort of in charge of the plot, and Players, because they should not be afraid of having their characters fail in interesting ways. Successes causing Consequences might be named Succeeding Sideways in the same vein. This is a technique best employed in a long-term game.  My Dwindle group Succeeded in implementing the Lady of Chaos' plan so they could gain a steady stream of hell shrooms. The consequence was that they opened a portal to the realm of chaos in a warehouse basement in a major city. The resulting chaos...

 Dwindle is a weird beast. It is a lot more narrative than DnD. And often in narrative games, it is suggested that dice rolling is kept at a minimum. Often a single roll will tell you which way the outcome of the scene will go, and the players play out the scene towards that end.  But Dwindle is a lot like DnD, because the "Game" aspect of it is designed to wear down the PCs' resources. To this end, the GM will need the players to continually roll for things. In many games, it is easy for a player to simply state that they "Know a guy" and bring in an NPC that can give them a toe-hold on information, equipment, or access they need. But in Dwindle, that's a resource check. Going shopping for a new magic belt? Roll a few times on Wealth. Using your healing ability? Roll your class resource. So my motto for Dwindle is to always keep the players rolling. They need to roll for negotiating, intimidating, seducing, everything. I may not have any consequences in min...

 This weekend, I had an idea. I will lay it out in relation to its past. When I first made Dwindle, the Resources were capped by the Tier. So you could only have 1 wealth 1 preparation, and 1 contacts at Tier 1. I kinda forgot it during one of the game hiatuses. But I want to bring it back. I am thinking of expanding this governing of dice by limiting the max size for Background dice as well. My thinking is this: Old Dwindle used to have damage dice, which were based around 1d (1 tier die). So, if I limit the size of these bonus die by the tiers, it would, sort of, grant the same feeling? I am also considering writing a d6 version of it, based loosely on the Year Zero Engine, but that is another game for another time. In slightly related news, I have begun character design for the pdf. I have an idea of what I want, but it is slightly out of my usual art style. I need to study more sources of art to nail everything down.

 Ok, this is just something I want to get off my chest. I was watching a YouTube video about making brown with RGB color system. It was very interesting, and the creator got a lot right. I think he was correct about the Additive color theory, as this is an area of knowledge I only have a passing familiarity with. Additive color is when you add more wavelengths of light to change the color. This is how our devices with displays make color. He had even had this great part about context where he had the same brown-orange and switched the surrounding color from black to white and back. In doing so, the orange seemed to change from orange to brown. The problem I had with the video was that he was applying the Additive color theory to Subtractive colors. Subtractive color is how real world objects get their color. They absorb certain wavelengths of color (subtracting them from white light) and reflect the wavelengths that give the object its color. So if you see a crimson thing, it is ab...

 It is time to start building a GM section. The first part is simply the concept of having a Session 0. This could have improved many of my early campaigns (both as a GM and as a player). Running Dwindle OK GMs, this part is for you. Dwindle has a lot of parts that are different than your standard D&D (the RPG gateway drug). Here you will find some general GM advice, as well as content that is particular to Dwindle. Session Zero: Concepts Session Zero is the idea of creating the characters and group concepts together instead of in a vacuum. When I first started to regularly GM and play in RPGs it was very tempting to start character building before the first session of a campaign. The idea was to get all of the character sheet filled in as quickly as possible, then jump straight into the first adventure. However, we ended up with conflicting concepts, like a wilderness ranger character in a city-centric campaign. So I am going to suggest a Session Zero. for your campaign. Set ...

 Sometimes you'll sit and think and worry a problem to death. Just keep turning it over in your head. Looking at it from all directions. And then PoP! You realize you have been staring the answer right in the face the whole time. This is what happened with me and TechNoir . I love a lot of things about the system. But I keep having a nagging feeling about the dice mechanics. The push dice cycle just isn't intuitive. I kept trying to rework the system, but the Push dice as a resource is so ingrained, that the system would just break down.  Then I was thinking. I really like the Adjectives. I really like the object Tags. I really like the system of figuring out Cost for an object. I love the Plot Map mechanics. I just don't care that much about the rolling mechanic. Last night I was looking back over my files, and came across Gods of Aureata (be patient, I'll get to it after Dwindle ). I tried to recall what exactly my mechanics had been. Then I realized how similar it w...

 So I was sitting here last night, noodling around with the mechanics of TechNoir . I was thinking about their concept of Push Dice, and it got me thinking.... Maybe this system is not for me. For one thing, The Push Dice mechanic as written is a bit cumbersome. You have to have a matching adjective to add a push die. You can only use a push die to improve an adjective if you rolled it, and if it survived the hurt dice, and even then you have to pass it to the GM. The number of push dice are low, and therefore I can see players being fine with an adjective only lasting until the end of the scene; which in my opinion is a long time. Heck, even an example in the book, has an NPC shaking off an Adjective after a single round. But I do love the Adjective and Tag network, so I am thinking about how to incorporate them into another dice game. Something that will more easily take on magic without totally breaking the rules. I'm thinking of a Pokethulhu or Year Zero Engine based game sys...

 Here comes another rambling post. There is not much else for me to write about Dwindle. I have updated the Dwindle Page  to reflect all of the updates so far. The only things I can think of adding is the role of the GM, a detailed description of the mechanics in use, and sample play. On another topic, I have continued to play with Technoir rules and researching and I found the Technoir Push Hack  that does an amazing job of putting magic into Technoir, and negates a lot of the noodling I was doing. Also, a big sponge of my time is that my daughter has gotten into writing books. As she is only 7, she still needs a lot of assistance. So every Saturday for the past 3 weeks, we have sat down and outlined a short story. We then create scenes with oragami bats and drawn and cut props and snap pictures of them. Next we edit the pictures and get them story ready. Then she tells me the story, and I ghost write it for her. After the story is finished, we insert the photos, and I g...

 Advancement is an important part of any RPG. It gives players a feeling of advancement, and gives them a chance to change their character as they develop. With the Tier system, I needed something that would allow investment into both the group, and the individual. I also wanted something swingy, and related to the story. The outcome is a system of Loots and XPs. The original had me rolling for Loots when something was...well....looted. It also became payouts for running the speakeasy and the other, various side-hustles hustled by the party. Advancement Advancement in Dwindle requires Experience Points (XP), which may sound familiar from a host of other games. Players may choose to place their XP into either the Team XP Pool which will raise the group Tier when the goal is reached, or they may invest in their own character. Team XP Pool The Team XP Pool enables the players to advance their group Tier; an endeavor explored elsewhere in this document. In general there is no rule for...

 B lades in the dark as an excellent gang progression system. It is an absolute masterpiece. It is also why I wanted to take out individual milestones for characters, and instead use Tier progression. In older games, when a new player comes in you have the question of where to start them? Should they start as powerful as the older characters, or start fresh from level 1?  Dwindle's Tiers have largely eliminated that burning question, because everyone is essentially the same level. Sure, there are varying amounts of skill points, resources, and ability ranks. But the starting amount plus a handful of points have been enough to get PCs up and running without feeling behind their teammates. In addition to the items below, old Tier would also define your damage die, and how many Abilities you had.   Tiers Tiers are your groups level, and is used to determine a couple of things. First, it defines the highest possible rank for your resource dice. If you are level 1, you ...

 Dwindle is called Dwindle , because of the resources. Most people will probably think that it is a simple mechanic that I swiped from The Black Hack  (2016), however the mechanic existed before it's venerable release. Don't get me wrong, as far as OSR goes, the Black Hack is a great game! But I remember reading a blog back when Google had an RSS reader. Sadly, I no longer have the link to back up my claim. But even the board game, Last Night on Earth  (2007), had a mechanic for items being out of ammo or power on certain low rolls (values depended on the firearm or item). Also, my resources are heavily inspired by Gumshoe . However, Gumshoe has a flat spend mechanic. Just the exact resources were yoinked. The Armor resource is new. Before I listed Armor as a basically unique thing, but I realized last night, that a slight tweak could make it a resource. Resources There are 5 resources in Dwindle Class Resource This is used to access class abilities. It starts at y...

 Writing up a character sheet helps me visualize what is happening in a game. One of the first things I do when I look at a new RPG is look at the character sheet. This usually lets me see what the designer is prioritizing (what is top left and center), and it suggests a lot about the game. Nitty Gritty simulations will have small spaces to write lots of numbers. Narrative games will have big empty spaces to jot narrative notes. Of course, that means, writing my own character sheets helps me visualize what is happening in my game. Dwindle is somewhere between? There are a lot of narrative pieces to a character, and they take up a large amount of space. 10 Skills, 5 items, 5 resources, 5 backgrounds, 6 traumas, and room for 9 abilities.  On an A4 page I fit all of that, a nearly complete summarization of the mechanics, and a good amount of space for notes. It's not pretty, but here is the base sheet for Dwindle 3.0 (the version I've been blogging about). I'm going to try to...

Sunday has been blog maintenance day. I played around with my table formatting and definition formatting. I then updated relevant pages with the necessary tags and classes. The Dwindle page is looking better, and I finally pasted in the Health and Trauma update, and swapped out the 8 original base abilities for a tight 5 that were inspired by PbtA. Also for readability, I am going to have high level headings on the right, and minor headings on the left. This makes it better when I have minor heading soon after a major heading. In game design news, I was writing in a scrap google dog last night, and focused on what I am now calling Base Dwindle. This will be the ruleset I use with my regular table, and is reflected in the Dwindle page on this blog. I then did some serious thinking about Technoir, and I found just a couple of things I would change if I was to run it at my table. Set TN I would set a base TN for all rolls, probably a 4. Then I would adjust from here, depending on the sit...

 I have a problem. It is a sort of addiction. I'm addicted to knew game mechanics. It is a terrible cycle, that I find myself going through again, and again, and again. It starts off when I hear about Awesome New Game, and what it does super amazingly well. I then look into that game, get a pdf, and give it a scan. I specifically look for what it does well. Then I read the character generation. If I really like the rules, I may start noodling around with the mechanics in my head. How could I streamline the roll? How can I add variance to the outcome. How can I add some gamble to the mechanics for players?  Then I start to rewrite the rules. I work on Target Numbers, edge cases, advancements, and character creation. I work on it to get a new derivative system. That is, I work on it until I hear about Another Cool Game, and it does something else super amazingly well. And the process starts again, ending the last system I worked on prematurely.  This is what is happening to...

I just finished reading Tech Noir (was the title 1 or 2 words?). Technoir . I dunno. It has been on my radar for a while, but my first scan through did not give me much interest. Someone on the internet was singing its praises, so I thought I'd give it another, more thorough read through. The game is not that long. I read a few chapters last night, and finished everything off on my morning commute. First, there is some solid advice GM advice in this book. The plot mapping mechanics make sense, and I wish I would have done that with my Dwindle game. I may start it, and retroactively draw in details from notes and memories. The best part of this mapping, in my opinion, was linking the character creation to the plot map via character contacts and favors. The Contacts available at character creation are few, so the players will probably have some overlap. Then they can pull favors during creation to pay for their items. Basically, putting the PCs in debt, and linking the contacts deepe...

 J ump the Shark is an interesting RPG where the players build a TV show that is long past its prime. It has excellent tables for choosing genre and story type, as well as main character development which then prompt the other players to make up a detail about the main character. I've threw this at my middle schooler table to round out their party. So far we had a Lion that is also a driver, a Scarecrow that is a healer / tinkerer, and a Witch that likes to burn things. We began last session (yesterday evening) naming their characters. They became Canola, Sesame, and Perilla. We then rolled on the main character development table. One character now has a tempestuous romantic relationship with a crow. The other players made the crow. One character is now flat, meaning she can be counted upon to always be the same. She yells everything, and has a catch phrase, "Can I eat it?" The last character always causes trouble simply because she is an angry nihilist. So the group was...