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Faction Turn is my favorite kind of TTRPG tool. It breaks down novel and desirable systems into a flexible core that can be ported to whatever game you have a hankering to play, or can just be enjoyed as is.

I’m a sucker for this kind of play and Faction Turn gives you just enough to juggle, then gets out of your way to let your imagination do the fun stuff.

Songs and Sagas is a tight OSR/NSR leaning TTRPG that gives you just enough setting and lore before getting out of the way of your player's own ideas. The shape-shifter forms and interesting play with collecting/spending cards to give you an advantage, familiar "quantum" inventory, and some very Banner Saga reminiscent focus on destroying enemy armor all go along way to preventing the game from falling into the blandness that some lean OSR style games suffer from. Giving you the option to focus on the hex map and eroding the threat rating of various hexes is a welcome riff on hexcrawl expectations - I'm a sucker for territory control and it is a simple way to approach it that makes that style of play robust.

It's a great RPG system that's concise and flexible enough to step well outside the bounds of what Songs & Sagas in particular is interested in offering (Good news, since you get a creator kit with it!)

Pubic text version of my review

Absolutely! I usually re-up those after a significant update and forgot about it this time. Take a look now.

Not at all! I honestly did it because it LOOKED to have more gravitas, and that felt very "World filled with Darkness." I'll probably nip that in a future edit : )

Absolutely! I always appreciate a purchase of course, but knowing that folks are reading, playing, or (best option) playing and enjoying my games is the biggest reason for doing this. [Little praise hands emoji]

Stoneburner is a great evolution of the already tremendous ‘Breathless’ system. It shoots the gap between harsh OSR game and the narrative-heavy, success-with-costs play that indie TTRPGs have become accustomed to. It nabs the best of what it needs from both worlds and combines them in a novel but flexible setting, with lots of room for various personalities and adventures. Being light on rules, it’s easy to learn, easy to build a character for, and easy to get playing (by yourself or a traditional group). The name is pretty cool, too!

I’m wrapping up the character sheet this evening, and the game will go live for sale shortly.

thanks for your patience - the page is a bit of a preview at this point 😅

An update on this: the newest version has removed all AI generated imagery. Artwork is now all licensed stock images.

Hell Grinders does exactly what you need: gives you the framework to run a couple hours of brutality with extreme 'heroes' shredding hardcore monsters that have just enough crunch to make them feel interesting without overwhelming. A good entrypoint into LUMEN and a great system for running a game with a heart made of boomer-shooter nonsense.

Slamming a Surge cola before playing is about the only way you could make this better.

Love everything I'm hearing here. 'Stern Chase' is on my short list to get to the table once I can wrest GM control of our regular group again and I love to hear that there may be refinements ahead!

FIST lives in a very difficult to manage sweet spot between what makes OSR style games appealing and what makes narrative-heavy indie games fun, accessible, and freeing. With an easy to pick-up and hyper-lean ruleset, it gives you a treasure-trove of gameplay and storytelling that laser focuses on its genre.

Creating new characters is always a blast because there are so many options that mix and entwine in strange and delightful ways. FIST does that thing I love with its character generation where you get pieces of story to fit together - but also some clear mechanical things that your agent DOES.

You will read FIST and think "Oh, this is pretty good."
You will play FIST and think "Oh wait oh my God why did I sleep on this it is FANTASTIC!"

Great idea! I'll be making some updates to these anyway for the 0.2 release. I can include some "blank" cards in the extras and might even take some time here to get a few templates prepped for software I can get my hands on (Affinity might be the only common one I can't do).

I'm in the process of prepping a new release of the game with some major layout changes (gameplay tweaks here and there but mostly presentational). Once that's ready I'll re-up the number of community copies available.

Until then, I do have a Quick-Start solo session adventure available as well (There should still be a few community/review copies available) to give you a taste until version 0.2 is up.

https://theyoungking45.itch.io/operation-snowblind-for-afterburner

Though now you have me thinking on some optional rules for adapting to a traditional hex grid map...That might need to be included in a 0.3 update...

"Descended From The Queen" games are always a hit but "Chasing the Ace" is especially good. There are deep and interesting prompts that tee you up to play around in the common tropes of the genre in the ways you would expect, but also give you the flexibility to take things in a novel direction. This is a great game to jump into for a night with your Mech-loving pals. 

Yes! I've been looking into this myself in the case I were ever to run demo games. I'm actually going to work up a more detailed answer as a Devlog post here shortly, for posterity. Thanks for getting me thinking on this topic!

We finally had an opportunity to get ECB on our table and had a blast! A mix of experienced “Forged in the Dark” vets and someone starting from square one and it was still easy and intuitive to step into for all. 

Despite walking in with a mess of clues the Theorize roll tanked which honestly made for a much more exciting experience! 

Thanks for all your hard work on this and for keeping the Redacted Materials adaptation guidelines so flexible! 

I know it’s been a while since this request was tossed out but wanted to second it. Even just a PDF version of the template to fill by hand/form fillable would be great if that’s not too arduous a thing to assemble.

Fantastic! So glad the game is making it to your table. I'd love to hear all about how it goes!

Thank you SO MUCH for sharing! It's exciting and rewarding to hear about folks playing the game, (especially as a first game to run for a group!) and to get a snapshot of how it went. I really appreciate you taking the time to let me know.

Whoaaaaa this map is gorgeous!

Yep! It is entirely up to the players (based on how they describe their attack) which attribute to roll. Missiles with +LockOn encourage the player to use GAUGE but they aren't forced to

Thanks for the heads up! Looks like an export error I missed! The Spreads version should be working correctly now.

Hope you enjoy the game! I'd love to hear how it goes!

Ah! I made them a bit on the high-res side out of caution. I don't have TTS on my computer at the moment, but I recall you can right click objects and resize them. 

Worst case, I'll hop in this evening or next and create some smaller versions of the tokens for easier use.

I think I'll have everything together a week or so before the end of the jam. Writing is nearly done, art is mostly or entirely there, and layout has started. Fortunately, I can scavenge some of the layout from the core game to speed things along!

This is intended as a "give the game a go and strip out any rules that are a little extra/not relevant to a oneshot." If folks like it, the core game is there to jump into afterwards. Pre-generated characters so that the table isn't immediately overwhelmed with a menu of options or disappointed that they picked something not relevant to the mission. As tight a single evening experience as I can get it!

The plan is to put together a one-shot, introductory adventure for my first TTRPG, After\\Burner.

I'd been meaning to put it together anyway, and this jam was the perfect excuse to get off my duff and get working!

This one will give players a stab at all 3 phases of play (with greater constraint to keep things fast and light) and puts them in a scenario familiar to fans of outer-space ice planet bases in peril!

I was thinking maybe section heading text being hand drawn and decorative, or even the tables (since there aren't too many of them overall). My first thought was "Oh the page background even if light would be cool hand drawn!" but I looked it over again and like the glitchy effect more I think.

Certainly not a necessity. More thinking aloud of what could look cool on a second pass.

LUMEN would be a perfect choice for this, absolutely!

Hand drawn is such a fun look for this! I know this is a first step with this game in particular - and to do more would be HELLA work - but having some of the hand-drawn elements in the layout as well would absolutely slap.

This has one of the wildest, most compelling, and inventive combat systems I've seen in a while!

Super refreshing to see a Cyberpunk game that is just as dedicated and interested in the 'punk' as it is the 'cyber.' Also "Push" is a really cool system and this is a great use of it!

It absolutely does! I could easily see my group running this with Dungeon Crawl Classics and 3/4 players reaction being "Why would you do this to us?!" and the forth player saying "Hahhahahahah I am so glad you did this to us!"

Just...talking so slowly any time they speak to Esther. All unskippable dialog, gang!

This one pager is absolutely gorgeous! Also, while I put a strong rating under "excited to play" I caveat that with "If I am the game master." :-)

I was not finding a download option on the game page. I take it release is still pending? Maybe a glitch?

Futile Lamentations is just really cool. It distills the best bits of Darkest Dungeon into a game that is more digestible and faster playing. I was reading through the pamphlet thinking the whole time "I'm running low on page here, how does this become a cohesive experience???" and was floored by the end...everything comes together in a really compelling way and I was ready to strike out on my first expedition. It's a great, tight little game that gives you exactly enough elbow room to improvise and keeps everything else lean and clear.

Don't get mad but...I like this game BETTER than  Darkest Dungeon...

This is one of my top picks among Breathless games! Maybe that's a sure thing with me as a miniatures lover, but I enjoy seeing a tactical take on a very cool game system that isn't inherently interested in the finnicky details of combat necessarily. This game makes that work, maintains the system's brevity, makes it fun, and does some inventive things on its own!

Assuming I did all this correctly, the sheet for Ore is all set! Totally painless and fun to put together!

Game is available now!

I think I'm jumping in?! Ore a horror game of outer space mining. Not an uncrowded field but this take would emphasize the temptation to mine in dangerous places (thus taking on risk and wearing down your dice to gain Credits) against the characters' individual (crushing) debt ... with a random interest hike rolls to ratchet up said debt if they aren't pulling in a high enough yield! Want to mess a bit with the core expectation of being able to 'catch your breath' by making oxygen supply a crucial and often endangered resource (and removing oxygen entirely if your session runs over its stated limit)!

Mine for iron, mine for diamonds, skim H3 from gas giants, drill ambergris out of space whales...all for the sake of someone else's profit!

Thanks so much! It's been holding up nicely in playtesting thus far. I hope players will find it strategic and quick to understand.