Inept Writes Games

Comes Now the Godswar was an epic campaign that I ran last year in Blades in the Dark. Heavily inspired by the city of Guerdon from the world of Gareth Hanrahan’s Black Iron Legacy , it saw the city of Doskvol play host to refugees fleeing a catastrophic global conflict, and the struggles and complications such an influx of people would cause.  The players went through a real ‘rags to riches’ arc, starting as refugees having to deal with crises and an incoming deadly winter in an internment camp on some formerly deserted islands (the three unmarked islands off of the coast of Whitecrown Island, which I reworked as the Three Sisters, complete with custom location sheet ). By the end of the campaign, they were shot-callers; defending the city alongside their friends and contacts from an approaching army in an epic showdown. It was a great campaign. One of the best I’ve ever had the privilege of running. A lot of this praise has to go to my players, who each brought skilled and uniqu...

Eat the Reich is a capsule game about vampires who kill nazis, and it’s very good at it. I’ve been a devout follower of the church of Grant Howitt since Everyone is Seagulls Goblin Quest, and so when I heard that Rowan, Rook, & Decard were making a splatterpunk, ultraviolent, vampires-in-WWII game, I was hooked immediately (Not to mention seeing Will Kirkby’s fantastic art, including this insane Drop Coffin design). Just look at this shit, isn't that fantastic? A shorter version of this review was first published in July 2024 as part of Questing Quill Zine #1 - check out the whole zine here ! The book sets out its pitch much more effectively than I could: “The Year is 1943. Europe is in flames. You are a unit of crack vampire commandos with a single objective: Drink all of Adolf Hitler’s blood and fatally destabilise the nazi war machine.” Short, sweet, and totally accurate. It sure does do exactly what it says on the tin. At its core, Eat the Reich is a really, really tightly...

Last week, I went to a talk hosted by the British Library to round off their excellent Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition. Sadly, the exhibition is finished, but it was a fantastic look at the history and breadth of fantasy in fiction, folklore, and popular culture; with many of its talks still on the British Library's Living Knowledge Network. This talk, about the history and early days of Dungeons and Dragons 50 years ago, was mediated by Matthew Clayton with two speakers: Sir Ian Livingstone; co-creator of Games Workshop, Chairman of Eidos Interactive, and author of many of the Fighting Fantasy book series. Mark Hulmes; GM for High Rollers & Nights of Evenstar, and regular GM for Wizards of the Coast, DnD in a Castle, and many others. Each speaker was given some time to give a short talk, then there was a short discussion between the panellists, and finally there were questions from the audience.  Sir Ian’s talk was focused on the intersection between his company, Ga...

Or, As Little as Possible, As Much as Necessary In a recent conversation with a friend of mine elbow-deep into their latest WIP , the topic of worldbuilding came up. More specifically, about when and how to worldbuild in the context of writing settings for a gamebook. My view? As little as possible; as much as necessary. This is a fun phrase, but it’s also pretty trite, so let's unpack it. We’ll also talk a little bit about what draws me as a GM to a particular system’s setting, and how I adapt setting guides into my storytelling and play, and what sorts of lessons we can draw as designers from that. To be clear - we’re working from a philosophy here that prioritises time at the table over time in prep - if you enjoy reading a tie-in novel to get you in the mood, for example - this won’t necessarily be useful to you. Here’s a (partially) rhetorical exercise: When I’m running a game, 90% of that setting’s lore is functionally useless. What does the snake kingdom of Najara have to do...

A while back, I took part in Foul Play’s Location Jam 2024 , and the way that Foul Play designer Hendrik ten Napel delineates the fictional space in his game is really simple, and nicely tactile - post-it notes. Why is it good? It’s a point-crawl system that works visually; when I look at a Foul Play location, I can imagine scribbling down areas on post-it notes for my group in-person. Unlike manually drawing out a battlemap, precision doesn’t matter; as long as everything is basically in the right places, then it’ll give the correct fictional positioning to my players. Then, something I think is super important - they can interact with the board. They can add their own post-it notes, they can remove them if they’ve obsoleted them; it’s a dynamic way to design a map that combines all the benefits of a point-crawl system with the tactility of physical mapmaking. The major difference between what I’m going to call goosecrawling and point crawling is scale. Point Crawls are commonly use...