The Dripping Tap

  This blog post is about a magic system for my work-in-progress ttrpg called YOU ARE A DEATH (K)NIGHT , or YADN for short.  [This post was originally on Substack. Now it's here!] This ttrpg is weird, specific, and it’s my love letter to a game of villainy and horror. Players play as archetypal “death knights”, reanimated servitors of a Big Bad Evil Guy. The game diverges in that, spontaneously, the PCs have all become possessed of their free will and collectively slain the Evil that made them. Now, possessed of great power and magic, their free minds must grapple with the horrors they’ve been made to do, finding themselves in a world they helped to ruin. A human brain piloting a petrified killing-machine is ill equipped for the horrors that follow it, like flies to a carcass! In other words, it’s not quite horror - horror is best defined as having a lack of choices, and this game is something of a power fantasy intertwined with a sudden end to horror and ensuing ...

  Nazgul from Bakshi's LotR adaptation   Back in April I teased the very beginnings of my TTRPG pet project YADN - You are a Death (K)night. A game for roleplaying powerful, undead wraiths like the Nazgul or The Ten Who Were Taken …if they had killed their master(s) and regained their free will at the 11th hour. I’ve been iterating on the basic resource management that I think I can share a sneak peek! Dice pools, resource trackers and boxes await you… [This post was originally on Substack. Now it's here!] Rules & Fantasies   Characters have three core stats: Malice , Gloom and Dread . Malice is the physical stat, covering strength, resistance to harm and intimidation. Gloom is the social stat, covering social interactions, determining how many minions you can have under your influence, and resistances of the mind. Dread is the magic stat, covering casting and resisting sorceries, as well as keeping one’s soul in one piece. This becomes important for resis...