Glass Bird Games

This is just a quick heads-up that I've released a single-doc version of my Cyclopean Organ  funnel project that I blogged through over the last couple of months. I haven't had time to fancy it up layout-wise, or to pass off an art brief to my talented fiancé , but I will be doing so over the next few weeks and hopefully have a thing of beauty by the end of September. If you'd like to support the Organ Beautification Project (or would just like to support my blogging endeavors), you're welcome to throw a couple of bucks at my itch page. You're also well within your rights to grab the thing for free. More than anything I'd love to hear from folks that give it a try - my limited playtesting has been a ball but I could always use more data. There have been some minor corrections and tweaks since I've blogged out all of the bits of this thing, but it's largely just a compiled version of the individual posts that made up the adventure. As always, thanks for r...

The Goat and the Bear  - Late 19th century Lubok Nearly there! It's been a busy week, but I spent the last couple of days assembling the secondary tables for the Cyclopean Organ to complement the Depthcrawl Engine . I'm really excited about the possibilities for the Organ's unique mechanics - the Sheet Music and Console Glitches for funnel victims that attempt to bend the Organ's power to their own will. I originally wasn't going to include a "loot the body" table, but given my playgroup's proclivities I'd like to have something on hand. You could easily replace it with whatever you usually use, as it's not terribly specific to the adventure. In terms of Treasures, I went in wanting to try to make my own RAW Cairn Relics. I think they're genius, especially the recharge mechanic. I also tried to introduce magical or mundane items that have built-in prompts for future adventures or arcs or complications for the continuing campaign. That's...

St Joseph's Church, Le Havre, France -  Reginald Van de Velde My work on the Organ got set back a week unfortunately, work and social engagements and all that. Luckily, the jam  deadline also got extended, so I should be good. I've finished the first pass on the main tables, so my plan right now is to get the secondary tables done by the end of this week and then playtest using Xenio's excellent Cairn Funnel rules  until I develop my own funnel procedures down the line. Though progress has been scattered, I feel like I've really gotten a handle on the Organ in putting together these main tables. I still have work to do tightening up some of the entries, and I'm going to be leaning on the treasure and sheet music results to add more of the transformative character development potential I set out as a goal in the first part of these posts. But I'm happy with what I've come up with, and I'm looking forward to running some of my pals through the grinder a...

We're back in the guts of the Cyclopean Organ. Little more stream of consciousness this time as I put together a few more elements to flesh the idea out. Should probably read the first post  if you want to get anything out of my fevered brainstorming. First, I want to get some residents of the Organ worked out. Just because nobody from the village has been into the Organ in forever doesn't mean there's nothing intelligent there. Definitely want to have the potential for minor faction play, so that means at least two current types of residents, and preferably one more minor presence. The Longfolk Originally, I was going to have the builders of the Organ be some generic fee-fi-fo-fum giant types, and leave it at that. But I've been thinking more about the purpose of the thing itself, and its relevance to the curse these ancient big bois left behind before they disappeared from history. I think the Organ was an ultimate expression of their values, both their legacy and the...

I'm planning on taking part in the Funnel Jam hosted by SageDaMage this month, and in keeping with the principle of Showing My Work outlined in my first post  I thought I'd sort of liveblog the attempt. Generally my instinct is to hold back on showing off anything I'm doing until I've refined it quite a bit, so I'm trying to fix that by inflicting my stream of consciousness writing process on anyone who stumbles on this. Lucky you. Funnels have fascinated me for a while, but I've never gotten around to running one. Having started my RPG obsession with character-centered, low lethality stuff, multiple character deaths in a single adventure as not just possibility but expectation  is pretty alien and exciting to me. At the same time, the idea of the events of the funnel as a starting point and seasoning for long term, organic character growth is very much in my wheelhouse and something I want to explore in depth. So I'm crazy about the idea in abstract, but ...