Outlanders rpg draft 1

A long time ago, I wrote the first draft of The Company of Monsters, a PbtA rpg in which the players get to be the monthly monsters we make here. You can find it in older patreon posts. I could have finished it, and it would have been... fine, I guess. Mediocre is maybe an uncharitable word. It would have been just another PbtA rpg. But I wanted to make a game that was better than that. Or at least, better than that *for me.* So in between making various other books, I decided to strip it down to the core and build it back up again, trying to make every part of it something that would help me both run it and write new material for it.

In the Outlands, posted recently, is the stripped down version. It’s meant for one-shots and highly episodic play. It’s not very complicated, but it has all the elements that are important to me. You don’t play monsters, but now that it’s done I can write self-contained scenarios and starter sets using these rules in which you do.

Outlanders, posted here, is a rough draft of the more complicated rules. This too is a game about humans (or human-ish people) travelling through the outlands, exploring and getting into adventures. I finished a draft of this game before a new version of The Company of Monsters mainly because I suspect it could end up being more popular and I want to have it available for that reason.

Now that this draft is finished, I will be updating it with new stuff and revised text whenever I get things done, but I am also switching my focus back to The Company of Monsters, which uses mostly the same rules but has more monsters.

Notable aspects of this game:

1. It uses the die pool system from Blades in the Dark, but also has player character moves, like Apocalypse World. Some moves can only be used in dramatic scenes, others only in interstitial scenes. However, it is also possible to replace them with the simpler moves from In the Outlands, if you like.

2. You choose a group type. This determines what sort of adventure you are on.

3. Characters are a combination of style and role. Role is like your character class, and style is your aesthetic and your power source. Style takes the place of race in other rpgs, but isn’t race because my interest in doing racialist fantasy is less than zero.

4. Advancement is a pacing mechanism, and you get XP based on how long you play. However, there is also a metacurrency you get as a reward for performing character-thematic actions, so there is still something for reward-oriented players to enjoy.

5. You track the strength of your connections to other people and places you encounter on your travels, perhaps gradually losing touch with those you haven’t seen in a long time.

Anyway, by the end of November this patreon project will be a full 10 years old, and if we’re going to do another 10 years, this is the direction I want to go in.