Quarterling’s Corner

  I. The world is not right. Where once there stood proud kingdoms, there is now nothing but ice and snow. Where once the nobility protected us, now they slaughter us in droves. And more and more, our children are born with parts not altogether human… Meltingmoor is my work-in-progress adventure game about mutant treasure hunters exploring a once-frozen, now-thawing gothic frontier in the aftermath of a failed revolution. I am currently playtesting the core rules and working on additional content such as magic items and GM advice. II. I think I’ve managed to design a combat system that is lighter, faster, and clearer than that of  Into the Odd without sacrificing the random chaos of dice rolls, the players’ ability to make interesting decisions, or the resource-management element of dungeoncrawling. The lightbulb went off when I realized that I don’t need to track hit points for every individual PC. One HP or “Morale” value for the entire party does the job just fine. If it hi...

I. We talk about freedom and agency a lot when it comes to games, but what do we really mean by that? Total freedom is boring. If you are the god of this imaginary world, if you can make anything and everything happen, nothing can surprise you. So we impose limits. You exist in this sort of world, you have access these resources, you have these abilities. So far, few would accuse you of impinging upon player freedom. So where is the line? I would posit the line is here: You work for someone else. Or, another character (such as a villain) forces your hand; you have no choice but to respond to their actions. I think when you cross that line, you're playing a different sort of game. Maybe you're more interested in narrative and drama. That's okay! But it's not what  I  love about games. II. Agency and freedom are misnomers, I think. I love games that put the players  in charge ,  in control ,  in command  of a specific character or organization in a specific s...