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Welcome to the hobby!

If you have the zine edition of the game, turn to the section called "GM materials," starting on page 24. That should give you a pretty good overview of how running the game works. In brief, as the GM you'll be creating a story at the table, using the framework and inspiration provided by GSTR—and, of course, drawing on your fellow players contributions too!

If you want to see some examples, I recommend checking out this Youtube playlist of recorded sessions of the game: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp2rr7I2jFTlcOHYF9PNj55wQ7owv4rJL

Fantastic! Really glad you and your friends enjoyed the game.

You can definitely run a short series of Great Soul Train Robbery if you just keep adding train cars and make sure each encounter has room to breathe. An alternative approach is to run a second session with a new crew of PCs robbing a different train, but reveal that a PC from the first session (especially one who maxxed out Sinner and was damned) is the Conductor of this new train...

Got to introduce a new player to RPGs last night using One Shot World. Totally fun! This hack of Dungeon World lives up to its promise of optimizing the game for one shots and making character/setting creation quick and enjoyable.

Started our session with a mid-battle cold open, and the Barbarian dispatched the giant snake enemy with one hit—but that was great, as we got to then see the PCs poke around the creature's cave, interrogate a corpse with Cleric magic, and generally get into shenanigans until the mountain itself started trying to eat them. A good time was had by all.

Oh man! I took a quick look, and now I have big grin on my face. What a fun group of players. And fighting snakes with lasers! Thanks so much for sharing.

Ran this game on a whim and had a blast! The pre-gen characters worked like a charm to get us off and running. We told a story about Frank Shelley and Griff Wells rescuing the President from a zombie-filled mountain in the Australian outback.

I'm so happy to hear that! Glad you and your friends enjoyed the game.

More and more, when people ask me about my favorite PbtA games, I include Escape from Dino Island in my list. It's just such a slick engine for one-shot or two-shot games, with a compelling hook (Dinosaurs! Mystery! Survival!) and great mechanics to back it up ("Tell a Story" always makes for great moments at the table). This is a really great game to bring to indie game meetups, local conventions, or wedding rehearsal dinners... any setting where a spontaneous RPG might be called for!

Back Again from the Broken Land is now available for purchase on itchio!

You are small people who walked into a big war. The Doomslord’s forces were gathered in the Broken Land, and your fellowship unexpectedly played a key role in the Doomslord’s fall. Now, laden with stories to tell and burdens to bear, you set off on the journey home. But the Doomslord’s Hunters are still out there, and it’s a long way to walk... Back Again from the Broken Land. 

❈

Back Again from the Broken Land is a short Powered by the Apocalypse tabletop roleplaying game of small adventurers sharing stories on a long walk home. It is meant to be played in one to three sessions. The game is inspired by the emotional, even bittersweet, stretches of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. 

The game is perfect for low-prep and no-prep one-shot gameplay, though you can also use it to play a short campaign of two to three sessions if you want to delve deeper into the characters' journeys. All you need to play are three six-sided dice, three-to-five players plus a GM, and a willingness to spin an emotional fantasy yarn together.

To celebrate the game's release on itchio, it is on sale for 33% off! Get the game here.

https://cloven-pine-games.itch.io/the-great-soul-train-robberyzine-edition

This looks so fun, and nicely explained in just a few pages here. I could see myself bringing this to the table sometime. Kudos!

Radical! :) I hope you have a great time with both games.

Today the zine edition of The Great Soul Train Robbery is available on itchio! Pick up the PDF to play your very own game of Desperados stealing from a train bound for damnation. Will you succeed, or be overcome, damned, or broken by the heist? If you missed the Kickstarter, this is a great time to get the game.

It's a tabletop role-playing game for 1 GM and 2–6 Desperados attempting to rob the train to Hell. Tell an allegorical Weird Western story using mechanics inspired by Grant Howitt's Honey Heist.

Check out The Great Soul Train Robbery here!

I think I resolved the issue, Kevin. Let me know if it looks right to you!

Thanks! Let me check what's going on there.

It shouldn't be... can you let me know what kind of problem you're running into?

I had the pleasure of sitting down with the hosts of The Gauntlet Podcast to talk about gaming this month. Several PbtA games come up, including my in-development game of supernatural spies in Cold War Vienna—Checkpoint Midnight.

You can find the episode here.

We also chat about the sci-fi PbtA game Impulse Drive, the modern-day monster-hunting PbtA game Sunset Kills (available here from Jesse Ross). I share my experiences running Urban Shadows in historical settings as preparation for designing Checkpoint Midnight. Get updates on Checkpoint Midnight here!

Bring Home the Babe is a game about an older sibling entering the fey realm in pursuit of a stolen baby. To play you'll need one player and one GM, two six-sided dice, and an hour or two. It uses a single PbtA-style move to resolve the bargains you make with the fey in order to pursue your sibling. Your two stats, precision and potential, are a shifting measure of whether you are following your parents' lessons or your own heart. Become too grown up and you'll have to leave fairyland. Become too lighthearted, and you'll never be able to.

The Tabula Initiative is a tabletop roleplaying game for 1 Player and 1 GM. It requires two six-sided dice and two hours or so to play. The player is an amnesiac black ops asset trying to recover their memory and stay one step ahead of their past. Your one move lets you rely on muscle memory to recover maneuvers from the recesses of your mind. This gets easier if you increase your Programming stat—but if you let your Programming reach 4, you are a fully on-mode Tabula operative once again. 

Will you uncover the truth about your past with the Tabula Initiative before it reclaims you? What will you sacrifice to chart a new future?

Nice! Very glad you like it.

Excellent! Thanks for reading, and send us any thoughts you have if you get it to the table!

Is the jam deadline hard and fast? I've got another submission almost ready... but I'm also at GenCon, and it looks like the deadline is 1am in the morning after Sunday of the con. Even a short extension would it make it way more possible for me to submit, and I bet I'm not the only one in this boat given the size of Gen Con. What do you think?