Photonics Engineer by day, indie RPG writer by night, especially interested in open/CC games.

See my stuff here: http://awkwardturtle.games

  • 7 Posts
  • 12 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • I’ve almost certainly go too many books, but for me RPG books are two things:

    • Something I do or plan to use the actual contents of. Whether that be rules, tools, or adventures.
    • Physical objects that are nice to look at and hold.

    Happily the indie RPG scene is very good at making books that cover both of those categies. I will once in a while go through the collection and give away books that I both don’t think I’ll ever use, and also aren’t nice enough as objects to be worth keeping around.

    I also have a number of magazine bins filled with zines, which I love but also desperately needs to be pared down.

    Also because I will take any opportunity to share a shelfie:

    Desk RPG shelf of “close to hand” stuff (and also tall books because they don’t fit on the other shelves).

    Ancillary bookshelf of RPG stuff:


  • I guess the question is whether your goal is to make all three stats equally useful, or to make sure the attribute damage mechanic is used equally on all three stats.

    If it’s the former then increasing the utility of the other two stats with initiative, magic, dodging, etc. would be a good way to go.

    If it’s the latter then making sure enemies have a wide variety of attacks works. Psychic/psionics, poison, ensnaring, soul damage, etc. would all help.


  • Although I do like applying damage to other stats where appropriate, I don’t actually think you need to if what you’re worried about is balancing them.

    STR is the more important attribute if you’re consistently getting into combat. All these games share an ethos that combat shouldn’t be a hugely frequent thing at the table. In that context, the stats are a lot more “balanced”. DEX is by far the most called for Save, in my experience, plus it’s how you go first in combat.

    WIS/CHA is a little trickier, depending on your individual campaign. Although in Mausritter specifically casting spells can cause WIL damage.

    FWIW this is something I grappled with a bit for my own Odd/Cairn hack (slightly exacerbated by some other rules changes), and I eventually came to the conclusion that I didn’t need rules changes to fix it. The only thing I really plan to do is make sure the included bestiary includes examples of damage to other attributes.



  • That looks great! We actually don’t add any flavorings into the mix outside of the salt + sugar, we did originally but found out we really liked the very smokey without anything added. I should really go back and try out some different options to see what’s out there though.

    We also usually smoke with “neighbor maple”. Which is to say anytime a storm comes through a branches fall out of the big maple tree in our neighbor’s lawn, we take it, chop it up, and smoke stuff with it.

    Slicing is both the easiest and most annoying part of the process for me. A few years ago we managed to get a hold of a second hand commercial deli slicer. It works incredibly well, as you might imagine, but then I discovered why you usually don’t have commercial equipment in your home. I use it maybe once every couple months, and it takes about as long to clean the dang thing as it does to actually slice something on it. I’m sure it makes sense in an actual butcher or deli where you’re using it all day, but for me I do 15 minutes of slicing and then have 15 minutes of cleaning off pork fat. It sure does make nice even slices of bacon though.


  • They go in the freezer, and when we want to use a pack we just toss it into the fridge the day before.

    The stars are because I ran out of the good plastic wrap (each has a layer of cling film then layer of freezer paper), and had to do the final two with the bad plastic wrap. I’m less confident about how air tight they are so they’re starred so we eat them first.




  • It’s fantastic, as simple as just chucking some garlic into a jar with honey. Wait long enough and you get a really nice almost balsamic-y garlicy liquid to drizzle on stuff (I love it on pizza). I’ve also done it with some chopped up habanero included to make it spicy.

    Insert usual caveats about being careful with fermenting food at home and doing your own research, and there being a small risk of botulism.