Academia in the Dark (Alpha)

I love Blades in the Dark. Desperate scoundrels claw their way up through a criminal underworld, doing anything they can to get ahead. A narrative focus that facilitates a conversation about the world rather than getting lost in mechanics. Sharing responsibility for the storytelling, while still keeping things grounded.

I've been on a bit of a magic school kick recently. Originally, I was designing one to use in my setting for Shadowbreaker, but the more I worked on it, the more I realized that a more combat-focused game didn't make a lot of sense. I didn't want to do what Strength of Thousands or Strixhaven did, which was to filter traditional combat-focused adventures through an academic lens - I wanted to capture what school felt like. The overwhelming stress, the drama, heightened emotions. I wanted learning magic and navigating relationships to take center stage - there can (and probably should) be more focused plots and plans going on, but I wanted to be able to just let the story unfold through all those tensions.

Eventually, I realized that Forged in the Dark games were a perfect fit for what I wanted. Stress and Trauma (renamed to Burnout) work perfectly, the narrative focus and built in consequences on rolls works great for letting a story develop over time, and the entanglements are a great way to interject some excitement to mix things up and provide long term consequences.

May I present Academia in the Dark! (working title)

• The Rules
• Character Playbooks
• Reference Sheets

Resolution Systems

I've been thinking a lot recently about resolution systems. How can we make a system that is:

• Fast to resolve
• Consistent across different types of roll/areas of play
• Nuanced in the outcomes it can produce
• Feels good to players

I've been struggling with this a bit in my own game, Shadowbreaker, and recently went through several different resolution methods (more on that below) faster than I was able to really playtest them, to the point where it kinda just feels like I'm spinning my wheels. I decided that I'm not letting myself tinker any more until I have a chance to test out the most recent version sufficiently.

In the meantime, I've been thinking a lot about the core system of Blades in the Dark - I remember about 5 years ago, it was a common sentiment online that a lot of folks wanted the narrative of BitD but the Tactics of game like D&D. There have been many attempts at finding ways to replicate the virtues of BitD with other resolution systems, but now I'm wondering if I can't go the opposite way.

What would it look like to create a tactical combat system in a Forged in the Dark game?

State of the Blog (2025 Retrospective and 2026 Resolutions)

Hey folks!

I haven't been writing here as much for the past several months, largely due to my concussion, and while I'm certainly doing a lot better than I was I'm still going to try to keep this short.

It's been a great year! Let's get into it.

Shadowbreaker RPG (Beta): Grounded, Narrative, Tactical Fantasy

Hey folks!

Those of you following my PF2 design posts might have noticed a dip in that type of post over the last few months. In particular, I'd gestured towards fleshing out a lot of different PF2 scenario structures, and have not done so beyond Dungeons. There are two main reasons for this. The first is boring and kinda sad, which is that I've had very low capacity for doing things that involve screens due to a pretty bad concussion that I've been struggling with for the past couple of months. The second, however, is much more exciting.

For the last several years, I've been tinkering with my own homebrew system, called Shadowbreaker, and it is finally in a form that I feel comfortable sharing. In the spirit of Prismatic Wasteland's 2025 challenge, this is still very much a beta - there's a lot missing, especially monsters, treasure (and other rewards), and scenario structures. I have playtested it in one-shots and with 2 PCs, but am only just now starting my first full-group playtest - I'm sure things will change, but I'm also really happy with where it's at.

If all you want is the straight dope, as Matt Colville says, here is a link to the most up to date playtest document! As well as the Character Sheet front and back. If you want more on my thought process, as well as an explanation of what sets this game apart from others, read on!

RHoD Addendum: Sniper Attack!

RHoD Masterpost

Hey folks!

I want to add a little bit of a twist to the Sniper Attack encounter, as per usual taking inspiration from things folks have said elsewhere (in this case the discord).

This will take 2 forms:

1. A mini skill challenge to find Skather quickly enough to catch him
2. A chase as he decides that his work is done and enough chaos has been sown
   

RHoD Addendum: The Battlecry of Brindol!

RHoD Masterpost

Hey folks!

Paizo's newest rulebook Battlecry! recently released, and it's pretty cool! It has skirmish rules that essentially let PCs (and NPCs) take command of Troops of soldiers and streamlines some of how they interact to help simulate a larger battle! It's not a full-scale Battle in the sense of the Battle of Brindol (I tend to use the word the way Strongholds & Followers does), but it can work really well to zoom in on one specific front of that Battle. Since 

Prompted by others on the RHoD discord (no idea how long that link will stay live), here's my attempt to integrate the Battlecry! rules into Part 4: Enemy at the Gates (doc here). I'm going to broadly use the structure on p169 under "Quick Skirmish Groups."

Let's jump in!

RHoD Addendum: The Night Before

RHoD Masterpost

Hey folks!

We will be starting the Battle of Brindol next week, based on my previous conversion, and in our last session I ended up writing some impromptu rules for adjudicating their final preparations!

For context, they arrived with 1 day to spare (having wasted time in the Witchwood, slowly traversed the Blackfens, returned to Brindol, spend several days at the Hammerfist Holds, and then dealt with the Ghostlord), so I decided to basically give them one last chance to make an impact! Here's what that looked like.

Before Rusthenge: The Endless Storm

Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth
– J. M. W. Turner

Hey folks!

Something a little different today - I wrote a module! It is intended as a precursor to Rusthenge, giving the PCs a chance to get to know their home town a little bit and grow connected to it before being sent away from it. It is designed for 4 apprentices (level 0 characters with the "apprentice option"), though I ran it for 2 level 1 characters instead and it went fine. It's fairly short - I ran it for my partner (controlling both PCs), and it took about 3 hours.

Here is the full document!

The rest of this post is a bit of explaining my thought process, a bit of advice for running it - let's jump in!

Stolen Fate Masterpost

Hey folks!

I finally finished running Stolen Fate, so I figured I should compile all those posts into one place! I'll also briefly comment on each chapter that I didn't remix or change, and include links to other resources I found on the internet.

PF2 Structure Part 5.0 - Towards Better Scenario Structures

Go to Part 1

Hey folks! Sorry for the delay on this, real life got in the way (see my previous post for brief details).

In this series so far, we talked about what Scenario Structures are, Pathfinder's Non-Scenario Subsystems, its Infiltration Subsystem (which is IMO the system's best example of Scenario Structure), and the Other Scenario Structures that Pathfinder 2e has.

Today's post will start relatively short, but it will be a living post, and I may come back and update it with other structures or resources. We'll talk about what Scenario Structures need and what things to consider when running them, briefly discuss Scenario Structures from other games that can be stolen without too much work, and we'll keep a running list of PF2 Scenario Structures as well as resources that might help folks design their own.

Lets jump in!