Glass Bird Games

Well, things are a bit fucking bleak today, eh? Let's talk about the end times. Between current events in the US of A, my work on my archeological hearth-fantasy setting , and my revisiting of the storyline of the latest Final Fantasy XIV expansion, I've been thinking a lot about dysfunctional, decaying and all-around disastrous empires and their ends. All of Ben Robbins' West Marches posts are incredibly useful, thought-provoking, and entertaining reading, but my favorite has always been his musings on Layers of History . I'm trying to invoke this especially in the stuff I'm writing lately, and it always helps to have some jumping off points for the Big Foundational Questions of a setting - the character of the ancient people that came before, and the reason they're no longer here. So here's some sparks for the long-gone, half-forgotten kingdoms of your setting. Be forewarned that bad vibes follow. Ruine Eldena, Caspar Friedrich 1825 Roll d4 to determine th...

In Crimea, Ivan Shishkin When I was very young there was a stretch when I was absolutely obsessed with Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf . For those unfamiliar, the piece is a narrated children's story accompanied by an orchestra, with each character represented with a specific instrument and theme. I loved  it, and would listen to it over and over again until I had every bit memorized. Not so much every word, or even the specifics of the story, but every turn of the music was etched into my imagination. The characters spoke to me not through their literal actions, but through the way they were portrayed by the orchestra. Soon I was imagining entirely new stories, new configurations of characters and their interactions based on the way their themes were woven together as the narration rattled on, entirely ignored. Music has such a deep-seated emotive effect, even for kids (or adults!) with no formal musical literacy to speak of. We should be leveraging this inborn sonic empathy be...

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...

I've been going feral waiting for my copy of Into the Wyrd and Wild . Anything woodsy is of instant interest to me. The woods have always been a special place in my life, a place that feels safe and welcoming and somehow like home. Weird horror is also very much my jam, though, and it's fun to tweak what feels like a comfortable and pleasant setting into something that's occasionally more sinister. I've also been on an anti-pdf kick lately. It's so much more engaging and feels more special to read things in print than on a screen. So I've been holding off on actually reading Wyrd and Wild until I get the thing in my hands. To help stave off the hunger, I've been developing a setting in my new game inspired by some of my fever dreams about what might actually be in the book. I think it's a lot more fairytale and less spooky than what I know of the book, since I'm also hoping to fold in  inspiration from  Dolmenwood   content. Still mostly pleasant and...

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...