I published another book and a TTRPG or whatever

[skysailor]

Haven't gone through the TTRPG yet but I read the book and it's soooo gooooddddddd

[corvabird]

Haven't gone through the TTRPG yet but I read the book and it's soooo gooooddddddd

*happy blushing*

[InspectorCaracal]

I'm a third of the way through the book now and it is absolutely emotionally destroying me, if anything bad happens to these people I will not be able to handle it

[InspectorCaracal]

Okay corva I have a couple questions for ya about Kin.

How easy/hard is it to run online without voice chat? Also, do you think it'd be runnable in a forum thread or does it need too much realtime discussion to make work?

Hmm. I haven't tested it without voice but it's very flexible. I think everything in Narrative Mode would be pretty easy in a forum thread, and Smooth Action Mode only requires a dice-roll per involved player so I think that'd be pretty straightforward too. Could work? Especially considering on YOUR forum there is in-built dice-rolling!

Hard to know until it's tried but I've played rules-light D&D on forums in the past and it was still a lot heavier than anything in Kin.

Ohh you're totally right, I hadn't even thought about using it that way. A lotta people talking about tweaking FATE to work on forums suggest condensing things into single rolls to streamline things. HMMMMM. Maybe I'll start toying with writing a small campaign.

But now we got a place to talk about it ALSO I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WROTE AN ENTIRE CUSTOM TTRPG FOR THE BOOK OMG

I, uh, got over-ambitious with the Kickstarter rewards. I was like 'I only need to promise a tiny TTRPG. I think I could make a one-page TTRPG.' and then I was like 'No, promise like 50ish pages. The rulebook they use in the game is a proper book and that'll look a bit more like it.'

And then I wrote the damn thing properly and by the time it was done it was ~120 pages. XD BUT! It's the same rules used in the book! Which I'm honestly pretty chuffed about. And I've since started looking at making other TTRPGs (including a Jam Jar TTRPG about necromancers) and extra content for Kin, and all sorts, basically because it turns out making TTRPGs is *awesome* and I love it.

Nonetheless ... not something I'd like to promise as a Kickstarter reward unless it's already 100% written and typeset. XD

Making TTRPGs is awesome lmao

The system for Kin is super interesting! I don't think I've seen a system that's as numerically lightweight but still uses multiple die sizes, and I really like how you correllated dice size to skill level. The quickrefs are great, too, they're super well organized and have all the important stuff. I think a player could honestly get on fine just with the quickref, although the GM'd need to summarize the lore stuff and give a couple ability examples.

p.s. the creature kit is great, more fantasy games should do that

[corvabird]

Okay corva I have a couple questions for ya about Kin.

How easy/hard is it to run online without voice chat? Also, do you think it'd be runnable in a forum thread or does it need too much realtime discussion to make work?

Hmm. I haven't tested it without voice but it's very flexible. I think everything in Narrative Mode would be pretty easy in a forum thread, and Smooth Action Mode only requires a dice-roll per involved player so I think that'd be pretty straightforward too. Could work? Especially considering on YOUR forum there is in-built dice-rolling!

Hard to know until it's tried but I've played rules-light D&D on forums in the past and it was still a lot heavier than anything in Kin.

Ohh you're totally right, I hadn't even thought about using it that way. A lotta people talking about tweaking FATE to work on forums suggest condensing things into single rolls to streamline things. HMMMMM. Maybe I'll start toying with writing a small campaign.

But now we got a place to talk about it ALSO I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WROTE AN ENTIRE CUSTOM TTRPG FOR THE BOOK OMG

I, uh, got over-ambitious with the Kickstarter rewards. I was like 'I only need to promise a tiny TTRPG. I think I could make a one-page TTRPG.' and then I was like 'No, promise like 50ish pages. The rulebook they use in the game is a proper book and that'll look a bit more like it.'

And then I wrote the damn thing properly and by the time it was done it was ~120 pages. XD BUT! It's the same rules used in the book! Which I'm honestly pretty chuffed about. And I've since started looking at making other TTRPGs (including a Jam Jar TTRPG about necromancers) and extra content for Kin, and all sorts, basically because it turns out making TTRPGs is *awesome* and I love it.

Nonetheless ... not something I'd like to promise as a Kickstarter reward unless it's already 100% written and typeset. XD

Making TTRPGs is awesome lmao

The system for Kin is super interesting! I don't think I've seen a system that's as numerically lightweight but still uses multiple die sizes, and I really like how you correllated dice size to skill level. The quickrefs are great, too, they're super well organized and have all the important stuff. I think a player could honestly get on fine just with the quickref, although the GM'd need to summarize the lore stuff and give a couple ability examples.

p.s. the creature kit is great, more fantasy games should do that

Ahh! I'm so glad you approve! I wanted it to be not to complicated for beginners but I *also* wanted to use all the pretty dice and that was my entire motivation pretty much so this makes me so happy. It's a little crunchier than I originally wanted (especially when you start using abilities that give bonuses) but hopefully no more than mildly crunchy.

The creature kit was just because I haven't got the resources for a monster manual but I wanted people to know how to make them. I feel like it just walks you through homebrew (which was the point but I was worried people would hate it) but if you think it's a good idea it makes me feel a lot better about it

[InspectorCaracal]

Ahh! I'm so glad you approve! I wanted it to be not to complicated for beginners but I *also* wanted to use all the pretty dice and that was my entire motivation pretty much so this makes me so happy. It's a little crunchier than I originally wanted (especially when you start using abilities that give bonuses) but hopefully no more than mildly crunchy.

The creature kit was just because I haven't got the resources for a monster manual but I wanted people to know how to make them. I feel like it just walks you through homebrew (which was the point but I was worried people would hate it) but if you think it's a good idea it makes me feel a lot better about it

The crunchiness level is about par with core FATE which is pretty light tbh. Maybe a little more crunchy from the levelling tables. The divisions are pretty subjective but ours is usually something like:

• Zero: Stats and abilities have numbers you compare when you do things.
• Light: Doing things usually involves dice and basic addition.
• Medium: Doing things usually involves dice, multiple additions and sometimes subtraction. There are basic tables involved.
• Heavy: Your action outcomes are represented by algebraic formulas involving multiple operations and you have to reference or memorize multiple tables for each encounter.

I'm a big proponent of flexibility when making a game and while big monster manuals are fun to browse, they're kind of a pain to actually use for building a game. Being able to make up monster stats and have the balancing written out for you Right There is one of my fave things and lets you do monster flavor as part of the storytelling instead of being limited to what's in the book. Also the fact that the balancing is simple enough you can cover it in a couple paragraphs.

[corvabird]

Ahh! I'm so glad you approve! I wanted it to be not to complicated for beginners but I *also* wanted to use all the pretty dice and that was my entire motivation pretty much so this makes me so happy. It's a little crunchier than I originally wanted (especially when you start using abilities that give bonuses) but hopefully no more than mildly crunchy.

The creature kit was just because I haven't got the resources for a monster manual but I wanted people to know how to make them. I feel like it just walks you through homebrew (which was the point but I was worried people would hate it) but if you think it's a good idea it makes me feel a lot better about it

The crunchiness level is about par with core FATE which is pretty light tbh. Maybe a little more crunchy from the levelling tables. The divisions are pretty subjective but ours is usually something like:

• Zero: Stats and abilities have numbers you compare when you do things.
• Light: Doing things usually involves dice and basic addition.
• Medium: Doing things usually involves dice, multiple additions and sometimes subtraction.
• Heavy: Your action outcomes are represented by algebraic formulas involving multiple operations and you have to reference or memorize multiple tables for each encounter.

I'm a big proponent of flexibility when making a game and while big monster manuals are fun to browse, they're kind of a pain to actually use for building a game. Being able to make up monster stats and have the balancing written out for you Right There is one of my fave things and lets you do monster flavor as part of the storytelling instead of being limited to what's in the book. Also the fact that the balancing is simple enough you can cover it in a couple paragraphs.

This has made me so happy because that was my big hope with the creature workshop! And why I don't actually use monster manuals when I DM things that need monsters ...

I like your tier list of crunchiness. I've only heard stories of things in the Heavy Category. My friend likes to talk about a game that has tables you need to memorise in order to even talk to another character, and that you can die in character creation. I can't remember what it's called though (It might've been Burning Wheel? Or that might've been another crunchy game ...)

[InspectorCaracal]

I like your tier list of crunchiness. I've only heard stories of things in the Heavy Category. My friend likes to talk about a game that has tables you need to memorise in order to even talk to another character, and that you can die in character creation. I can't remember what it's called though (It might've been Burning Wheel? Or that might've been another crunchy game ...)

I can't remember but I've heard of that die-during-creation one too lmfao I remember being like "i am not hardcore enough for this".

Burning Wheel isn't super crunchy, I think, since it's the system Mouseguard was based on and I'd put it maybe at Medium Crunchy; the basics are simple, just dice pools and checkboxes, but it does have a bunch of stuff to track on your sheet. (My main thing against it is it's got the "pile of dice" effect that a lot of d6-based systems get. But it does have one of my fave TTRPG mechanics, tho, which makes failures not only count towards advancement but required.)

honestly I use D&D 3.5e as my base reference for crunchy games, lmao. I mean, here's the info for one of the basic core classes for an example.

edit: Another pro to your creature kit: it applies just as tidily to making NPCs, which is a thing ALL games make you do

[InspectorCaracal]

OKAY LAST QUESTION CORVA I PROMISE lmfao

I really wanna try running Kin here on the forum. Would it be cool if I attach the character sheet and player quickref PDFs to my sign-up post?

(also since I haven't mentioned it yet: your starter adventure is amazing. Like. It's so well put-together??!! It's got a smooth narrative flow, thought-out NPCs with helpful tips on what info they might share and their attitudes, tidily organized details for non-linear play, and showcases multiple different mechanics and styles of play in a clear-cut progression so new players and GMs can familiarize themselves with the whole breadth of the game's possibilities in just one adventure. I'm in AWE.)

(p.s. I'm making my own adventure for the forum, not spoilering yours, don't worry, I'm just referencing yours a lot because IT'S SO WELL DONE)

[corvabird]

Okay I'm going to reply properly later when I have a moment to sit down, but a) thank you!!!!! and b) you can share any of the TTRPG content with anyone you are personally playing games with. I think I even made it explicit on the copyright page.

So go forth and make whatever! I am hype!

Proper response later, eee!