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I think me preferring REAP to RUNE is because I'm not a big Dark Souls fan, but I loved the vibe of REAP, and it's funny to see how much the inspirational source material probably plays into RUNE's dominance over REAP. I also think the 5x5 grid was more interesting (and loved LOOT's 6x6 from a GM perspective for designing interesting battle layouts, I do kind of wish there was difficult & permanent terrain options), but I enjoy all of your games that I get to the table! Always love these very transparent looks into your process and achievements. I'm looking forward to seeing how I do on that trophy list!

i played a couple session of FIST and it was really fun

Thanks for doing this again this year. It's always interesting and surprising to see how the year has gone for you. I have two comments: 1. Congratulations on the upcoming birth of your child. My first is due in March :) 2. I got Rune and Hunt for Christmas this year! And I'm very excited to play them. I purchased through your website, which I found very user-friendly, and I was impressed at how fast the delivery arrived. So...thanks!

just wondering where is the part 3

It's very cool you share all this!

The Gila RPGs Year In Review is one of the things that most inspires me to keep working on projects that I love. I appreciate the heck out of you, am so excited to play some of these new games, and look forward to more time as ttrpg contemporaries! Also, FYI, tomorrow my 5 year old and I are planning to work together on some design, so there's some WILD fun Dad-Game-Design-Stuff in your future! :)

So its. . F.E.A.R. ttrpg. thats awesome.

Thanks for the video. Can i ask, what are the oracle books, and how do you get them? I cant see them listed on any of the points of sale? I was planning on grabbing a copy through amazon but it doesnt seem to include them on there either... Thanks

Running this for my holiday one-shot tomorrow, reskinned to be a winter wonderland turned sleigh-down slayground. Can't wait to see what shenanigans we get up to! This was a very helpful tutorial for planning the adventure! Keep up the great work, Spencer :)

So, picked this up. Very good game. Very good game even if you're not taking the time to let yourself get immersed, which actually is something you can do with this.

Travel serves to heal the scars before reaching home 💚 Very very interesting, thanks 💕

Does the tactician begin with a single d6 in his dice pool? Aside from the advances that allow for d8 or d4s to be rolled, is d6 the default?

Ok, so browsing your store, if there were a realm atlas for REAP as there is for RUNE that would be wonderful. Also, will you do another print run of the RUNE atlas?

Well I loved REAP, love it. I have seriously contemplated asking you how you conceptualize and develop realms. Then I found this, hopefully this will answer a lot of my questions! Looked for more realms for it, found none, so I'm going to give RUNE a shot. Eventually I'm going to need to make new realms though- what program are you using to create this and do I have permission to try to make realms? My only gripe is that all of the REAP realms are not printed in the booklet. I find printed material easier to digest. Is there any way you would recommend to get them printed?

I missed the stream, so I'm excited to watch this and get all the juicy NOVAverse lore!

I have complete faith that you've already thought of this, perhaps even in the fifth of the video I've yet to watch, but: LOOTsaber

This looks great. Just backed it. Can you tell me what the music in the background is?

I imaged creating a sweet treasure chest to “hold the loot in” as a GM. And when the players finish the quest just busting out the tiny treasure chest and letting them “get the loot” 😂 Backing this!

What a novel combat system! Really excited to see more about LOOT (and looking over the crowdfunding campaign now)!

Backed!

Like the concept, very different from the Lumen 1.0. I'm not 100% sold on the idea of the Boss's defence. I have seen too many cases (in D&D) where PC's choose to wail on a monster inflicting vast amounts of damage even though its clear that this method isn't working, rather than try to find the weakspot. You could end up with this situation very easily in Thorn. I would need to see an actual play on how this works.

Such a clever exploration system, I hope you're doing more zones because this game is gold.

This LUMEN system is really neat. Love to see where this is going. Definitely gonna be following these projects.

I picked this up from Adam at Gen Con this year and am SO excited to jump into it.

Hey! Glad to see you are still doing these. I haven't been following Thorn, but I just picked up RUNE and ran through two maps. I'm looking forward to LUMEN 2.0. I made an unpublished LUMEN 1.0 game based on Metroid a while back and it was a lot of fun. These design videos made that a lot easier, so I'm happy to see you doing them for your other games too.

This looks awesome, I'm thinking about using this as a prompt for a character journal for a ttrpg I'm running.

Just bought the game! Should be here soon-ish! Thanks for the recommendation!!

The instant I read the Draco Knight's main ability, I had the vision of a Starlit using Comet Strike as a Draco Knight leaps in to slaughter everything within This fucking rules

I love how the Thorns look like Hive but trees haha

Hey! Where did you buy the physical book? Can't find it anywhere

Looks great! Thanks for the interesting introduction! 😊👍

On the "there's no difference", I think the biggest issue is often that there are unspoken assumptions about what games are that aren't compatible. The "Cultures of Play" article is a good intro, though I strongly disagree with a lot of the characterizations. That, and a number of the design schisms have also to one degree or another aligned along political lines, and that always makes things ugly. But realizing these differences, and treating games that break your assumptions as just kinda "different" things, and becoming more omnivorous is always a good thing.

The whole thing about "the one thing that links it what people expects" really resonates. I'm more in the Fate space, and the big challenge with Fate is usually "yeah, I know this looks like <this other game>. It's not. It's actually this other thing, and if you try to treat it like another game, you're gonna have a bad time. Try to forget what you think you know." There's some real value there that if something doesn't work like usual mechanical tropes, *don't let it look like them*.

The golden box concept is so interesting. It makes me think of into the odd like how HP is small and damage goes at your strength stat and the lower your strength the harder it is to succeed. Or games like knave where damage attacks your carry capacity and your bag space is a core game and narrative mechanic, as you lose stuff in your golden box as you die. I also had the idea about classic monster tropes like vampires and warewolves dying to steaks in the heart or silver, meaning players shouldn’t be able to damage their HP (truly horrific) unless they “find the clues” to their weaknesses. Monsters like goblins just die from HP and there is no “mystery” on how to kill most monsters. This does mean meta gaming trumps player build though. There needs to be a mix of both. So HP representative of making the monster vulnerable and then you have to execute their weakness I suppose HP monsters need to exist though so immunity monsters can truely shine

I haven’t read any PBTA rule sets or hacks. I play ironsworn/starforged which is mixed success design for GMless play. I saw dungeon world creator play it and he thought it was “innovative” does BLG have any strong opinions on how ironsworn was adapting pbta for solo play ?

I was slightly disappointed by FIST , it's a weekend warriors boardgame without a board and barely achieves to be a fleshed out ttrpg as it's claims it is. Although I can see much potential for it further down the track.

This has my brain buzzing! I can already see someone making a strange powers battle hack of this!

YES! Thank you

Probably one of the best explanations of how to run PBtA. Could have saved me many frustrating DW sessions

Very cool. When I first played Nova and looked at the system, I thought about a Diablo using the Lumen system. But I love the concept of the cards and how the deck changes depending upon who you work for. I am especially interested to see the "improve the city" mechanic, as this is often an area I struggle to implement in my other games.

Has been on my wish list for a while. Thanks for the review.

Love this idea and am pretty excited to try out the QuickStart! Can’t wait for more LOOT! 🤩

Fantastic discussion! ¡Gracias!

Oh man, listening to BLG talk PbtA makes me realize how much I've borrowed from his philosophy when describing it to people after years of listening to Stop, Hack, & Roll! I'm running an Unlimited Dungeons game at lunch at my work (derived from Dungeon World), and I've been debating stripping away HP and replacing it with a Masks' style "Conditions" counter, where once you've marked each Stat with a debility or whatever they're called, you're out of the fight, and they linger, only recovering either 1 per Rest or when an ally uses Gear/a Move. I love the idea to also do something like Brandon said about "when you mark a condition on an enemy, they use a specific move." This should help with the limited time we have on lunch breaks, too. Also, 100% going to try voice-capture copy writing, that's genius. I already podcast and edit my own voice to obscene levels, doing it while describing my ideas for games just makes sense! Have a great vacation! Thanks as always!

I respect the diceless approach, but I'm also very fond of games that only require and use 2D6 (TinyD6 games are my favorite of this kind, like Tiny Dungeon 2e). Makes them less crunchy and more accessible, while keeping a small element of randomness.

Brandon is like twice as loud as you, Spencer. But well worth listening to! 0.00 Introductions and Background 15:10 PbtA and Combat - how it works? 20:27 Brandon's Dungeon World Homebrew 22:32 Masks' Combat 24:12 How Brandon would design Dungeon World - "Dramatic Change Moments" 26:45 Don't just think about Damage - Everything has a real Move People don't read PbtA games 35:50 Urban Shadows has section on how to make a PbtA 38:27 PbtA Diametrically opposed to traditional play; The Golden Box; 44:43 Protean City Comics biggest complaint is how relentlessly Brandon runs the PCs; Combat should allow time for vignettes (and smooches) 48:05 All games are just games 49:10 Dungeon World criticisms 51:28 Brandon wants to write Fantasy PbtA 52:56 Need a crash course on PbtA Combat Living RPGs - Never T-T Hey Brandon, Check out Magpie's own Helena's new Fantasy PbtA Against the Odds! It has some great romantic themes mixed in especially the Knight

Re: the grapple action, One of the reasons I think you’re a great designer is your willingness to say “ah, this part of design sounds boring to me, screw it.” More folks (me included) should be honest about what parts of their game they actually care about

Based on what I know, the term "tap" used to be patented my MTG but it fell through at some point. That being said, Hasbro has some robust lawyers and is evil enough to throw their weight around, so I wouldn't fight it if they bug you.

This took me back to ed psych in my teaching program. It's cool how the conversation about scaffolding students in a classroom setting overlaps with RPGs!

Looking forward to it! I loved the preview!