Glass Bird Games

Like a lot of GMs who enjoy a playstyle divergent from that prescribed by the RPG industrial complex, I often find myself in games with people whose prior game experiences don't exactly mesh with what I'm putting in front of them. They need a little onboarding. They need permission to free themselves of the constraints those past experiences have ingrained in their brains. Specifically, they often need to be reminded that they can do (well, try) anything. This is an aspect of tabletop play that people often reference as unique to the form, but it's not something the reality of play always bears out. This is part of my aversion to meatier systems with special abilities and skill lists and grappling rules and so on: they promote a video-game mindset. Encounters have been placed in the world for you to overcome in the specific way the designer intended, in the manner in which your character is built to overcome them. Pay no attention to the walls of the hallway/railroad - they...

A Frog Sitting on Coins and Holding a Sphere; Allegory of Avarice by Jacob de Gheyn II Magic Items as worldbuilding is well-trodden ground, I think. What better way to invest players in the history and texture of a game setting than to tie it directly to the ultimate rewards they're seeking out? It's great for the creative process too, giving you something to crystalize off of , whether your world is informing your magic item design or vice-versa. Often neglected, however, is the most humble unit of treasure/experience/endorphin trigger, the coin. Especially in OSR circles, the coin is an ever-present carrot at the end of an outsized stick. It's the end-all be-all of character advancement in any treasure-as-xp system, but rarely used as a vector to reveal hidden information about the larger world and its history, at least not beyond a notable ruler on the obverse face. Lich Van Winkle did some ruminating on this issue in their thought-provoking piece on coins and advanceme...

Just a quick heads up that I've published The Barrows Hunger on my itch.io, and it's available for an absolute absence of dollars as we speak! Had a blast writing this adventure despite some technical difficulties that prevented me from completing as polished a layout as I would have liked. That will come down the line when I'm back in the good graces of my laptop, but for now please check it out and let me know what you think! Proud of a lot of the ideas in this thing. Thanks to Yochai and Chris for running the jam, and to Dyson for the maps and everything he does in general. Back to regularly scheduled(ish) posts soon! The Barrows Hunger by Glass Bird Games