itch.io

I'll be running a full table of mine at a local convention a couple days after the jam closes. Looking forward to see how it plays!

Thanks! I'm going to print out a few copies for a local convention so I can take some pictures of it in its natural habitat: a three-ring binder.

My Department of Dungeon Prevention has been through its first full draft. I'll be playtesting it at least once before I submit it, but you can check it out here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ag_avKs4susShRdYH3Z_n4Zva5poGjnDmHM3jw8QzCg/...

Feel free to comment! I'm considering releasing some additional material in the form of Appendixes, like lists of code violations or new location charts, so let me know if you want to be a part of those.

I was trying to come up with a concept that sparked with the Minimalist ideal instead of just omitting formatting and layout. What game necessitates this presentation, you know? So earlier today I came across a meme post about how dungeons just happen when the conditions are correct: hoard too much wealth, bam, dragons. Let your keep fall into disrepair? A necromancer will move in. Which means a kingdom is incentivized to prevent those conditions from coming about.

So my game will be the employee and operations manual for the Department of Dungeon Prevention. Basically a one-shot rpg where you make your team of field agents who will explore a structure and assess it for code violations that could result in a goblin infestation or being overrun by mimics. The spare presentation of the information is because it is an in-world bureaucratic document: these scribes aren't making something fancy, it's a government handbook.

The players make their investigators and write up their particular strengths (as well as some weaknesses in their approach that could cause them to overlook certain violations). We'll go around the table pitching issues and how they violate code and might lead to dungeonization, and other players will have to step up and either address it directly or just have to write it up. If you can't solve enough of the problems while you're there, you run the risk of the dungeon attracting adventurers, and then there's law-breaking and negligent death suits and it's just a whole mess. So the fail state of my little indie game is you'll have to play D&D in your new dungeon and take advantage of all these code violations. (I leave that last part as an exercise for the players.)

You Reap What You Sow is the newest release from Nerdhaus Games. This 3-player card-based RPG is an exploration of life, death, undeath, and our regrets and questions about all three. Each player is an undead facet of one formerly-living human: the body, memories, and spirit of one person who find themselves separated and trying to solve the mystery of their death before the Reapers catch up to them and force them to move on in the afterlife and rest. It's an introspective look at how we life and which parts of us last beyond the grave, as well as an introduction to the upcoming Boneyard RPG which focuses on the Reapers and their Omens.

I wanted this project to ask some heavy questions (similar but distinct from my last game, The Long Way Home, a different card-based project for a small number of players) but it was originally inspired by a joke: What would you do in D&D if someone reincarnated and found out the rest of their remains had been parted out into various undead beings? Can you eventually get along with your former body, do you need to have a relationship with them since you all used to be the same person? But eventually, the joke became something else: What if different parts of ourself ended up strangers? Would we know them, or want to, or even be able to be close with them at all?

This version is still in playtest (though fully playable) and will serve as the basis for a custom deck of prompt cards with new art that handles this game all on its own. If you get involved now, the pdf of the final version will be free for you when it comes out!

Nerdhaus Games' newest project just hit digital shelves.  The Long Way Home is a 2-player asynchronous journaling rpg about a post-apocalyptic couple separated by circumstance struggling through the badlands and the dangers of their unexplored Habitat to find a way back together. Take on the role of one of the two figures and see if you can beat the odds and find your way back to each other in this Wretched & Alone hack built around sharing audio or video diaries.

We also recorded a full playtest of it and released it day-by-day on YouTube. The audiodrama doesn't need an understanding of the game to function on its own, and runs about 3 hours of total content generated by the prompts in the game and the players themselves.

Thanks, and swing by the itch store if you like what you've seen/heard so far.