August is #RPGaDay2024 and I am going to posting daily responses to the prompts. You can find more information about #RPGaDAY2024 here: https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html

There are two sets of prompts this year and since I have room to do so on the blog I will answer both. In episode S2E6 of my podcast titled RPGaDAY2024 Panel Discussion I assemble an esteemed panel and we go through the main prompts for the entire month’s so I will try to give different answers here on the blog but may end up repeating myself occasionally.  

On their podcast Mirke the Meek suggested using the alternate prompts to create a setting and that is a great idea so I’m going to steal that. The setting I am going to craft for this month will be a modern, conspiracy style setting. Nominally I think we’ll set it in the 1970’s to avoid the problems cell phones and the internet can cause if player characters have access to them.

Here are the main prompts:

And here are a set of alternative prompts suggested by Skala Wyzwania, look at the day on the left, pick the theme, then roll d10. 

Day 2 Main Prompt: Most Recent Played.

Reaver the Sword & Sorcery RPG by Raven God Games. I have been involved in a two year long playtest campaign for this ruleset and setting and it is a blast! Joe Salvador, the author and genius behind Raven God Games, has been working on these rules for much longer and I was fortunate to play in some of the earlier play tests as well. I will post an announcement when the kickstarter launches, it is mainly to just pay for more art, and you can already download the quick start, it is available here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/419427/reaver-sword-sorcery-rpg-quickstart

The neat thing about doing a two year long playtest is that we have been able to advance the characters from starting to high level and verify the rules work. We have also play tested the mass battle and naval battle rules. You can buy this game confident that it has been throughly tested, something that sadly seems lacking with many games.

Day 2 Alternate Prompt: Forest and my d10 roll is a 7 which is “Create a Simple Mechanic”  

Let’s make a mechanic to handle being lost. The nice thing is that it can easily be adapted to being lost in a city, a large department store in a shopping mall, a library, or anywhere else you wish to adapt it to.

The first step will be to determine if a character is indeed lost, this should be done using whatever mechanic is appropriate for the rule system you are using. In some cases it will be a skill check, in others it may be an attribute check, and others may be a simple roll of a d6. Once you know that they are indeed lost you can now use the following mechanic.

How long did it take to figure out they were lost?

Roll a d6

1 It takes ten minutes or one sixth of the distance for this leg of the journey to notice they are lost.

2 It takes twenty minutes or two sixths of the distance for this leg to notice.

3 It takes thirty minutes or a half of the distance for this leg to notice.

4 It takes forty minutes or four sixths of the distance for this leg to notice.

5 It takes fifty minutes or five sixths of the distance of this leg to notice.

6 I takes an hour or the full length of this leg of the journey to notice.

(Adjust the time as appropriate for the situation and if your rule set has degrees of success you can give a positive or negative modifier to the roll depending on how badly they failed the check to see if they were lost.)

Roll a die appropriate for the type of map you are using (d6 for hex, d4 for square or grid, d12 otherwise) to determine the direction they end up going from the intended path. If the location is a mall or library you could always just drop a die on the map to determine the location where they realize they are lost.

I am a big fan of always rolling in front of the players or having them make rolls that may turn out poorly but this check does lend itself to a secret roll behind a GM screen.

That’s all for today, until tomorrow be excellent to each other!