TSoY in space: The inhuman
This post contains thoughts about the inhuman elements of the game world: psionics, aliens, robots and androids, cyborgs and whatnot. My experience in balancing secrets and keys is not great, so all commentary is gladly accepted. Few of the secrets are intentionally powerful; steel and wires, in particular. Psionics Everyone knows psionics exist. Very few have met anybody capable of manifesting them or controlling their power. There are rumours of gifted children simply disappearing and of secret government programs and corporate assassins and so on. Rumours, nothing more. Secret of psionics: The character can contact others with her mind. This re

TSoY in space – skills
This post contains the skill list for the scifi version of the Shadow of Yesterday that I’ve been running. Skills These are copied from the tSoY wiki, with removed and added entries. Innate Abilities Every character in this game has three innate abilities: natural reactions and quantifications of the character’s physical and mental stability. Ability Name Uses Pool

Burning death frost doom
We did indeed play Burning Wheel old school style. I had a number of pregenerated characters, seven I think, and there were five players. I had built the characters so that a number of them had specific drives; locations or non-player characters. There was a duel of wits to determine where to go and the result was, as the fate had it, death frost doom. First, I’ll describe our play a bit; then, some of what happened in and under the cabin. Play The player characters were a knowledge-seeking sorcerer, a haughty knight, a ranger whose family had been killed by orcs (traditional D&D character if there ever was one), an overconfident and mad monste

Burning sandbox
This is a game I want to run some day. Maybe next Saturday, but probably later. Fiction-wise There is a bunch of kingdoms, fighting as they ever do, but also occasionally financing explorers to distant lands. There is a great waste west of the known kingdoms; there are few barbarians, some stunted people, a number of ancient ruins and scores of monsters there (or say the rumours). Some explorers discovered ways through the waste: An oasis here, a deserted town with a well there, easy passage through rocky wasteland somewhere else. The remarkable things is what was found on the other side: There’s more waste, of course, but there is also a great sea

D&D 4e and social conflicts?
Way back when 4e was previews and rumours I remember there was some talk of social conflict system. I haven’t heard much since, which is no surprise, as I don’t really follow most blogs focusing on 4e. Friend asked about the subject, so now I’m asking you: Is there a distinct social conflict subsystem in 4e? Particularly, distinct from skill challenges and skill rolls. If yes, is there some nice summary available somewhere? I have PHB and do not intend to spend any money on the other books and further I do avoid illegal (though morally justifiable) actions. If not, are there good examples of social skill challenges available onl