stepnix: Player One (break)

Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine isn't as tightly structured as Princess Wing, but it does provide some guardrails:

1) The game is divided into chapters, that typically cover a length of time determined by the campaign genre

2) Each player can (and usually will) perform two XP Actions per chapter, with available XP action typically determined by campaign genre. These are usually specific emotional beats, or actions that become significant by having attention drawn to them, rather then their outcome.

3) After performing an XP action, your character "fades," or loses narrative focus.

All of this combines to form a revolving spotlight effect. If the spotlight falls on you, it helps to have a scene prompt ready!

Your scene prompts are bundled into quests. A full quest write-up contains:

1) A situation your character is presently involved in, or a situation they keep coming back to. This is the Quest itself.

2) Major goals, significant narrative beats that you can expect to happen during the Quest a limited number of times. The GM determines when they've been fulfilled.

3) Quest flavor, minor narrative beats that you can expect to happen during the Quest 1/chapter. The player can declare that quest flavor is happening without waiting for the GM's suggestion.

So! Of these, the quest flavor is the scene prompt tech closest to what I discussed with Princess Wing. The player decides that the scene will be about something in particular from their character material, and the scene will be about that. A quest's major goals work a little differently. I'd suggest they're prompts for the GM instead, scenes that the GM should be on the lookout to set up and create the opportunity for. I've heard the phrase "character flags" used for this kind of thing before.

[In practice, a Chuubo's game will probably see players saying "hey GM I have an idea for how to fulfill my major goal," and that's totally fine. It's a game that wants everyone to spend a little time in the director's chair, even if the GM has the most explicit power there.]

Much of this structure and prompt tech returns in The Far Roofs. This time, the quest flavor summons not just a narrative beat, but a specific emotional reaction to it from the player character, as determined by a Mood Roll. That's a lot to work with from just a couple lines!

Lastly, Far Roofs has a few prompts associated with its Mysteries and the neighborhoods of the Roofs.

The other prompts I've discussed here are linked to their games' progression systems. You get XP or other benefits from invoking them, which drives your character's story forward. The Errantry prompts, by contrast, are only there to spark ideas, characterize the element of the setting they're associated with, and invite players into the director's seat.

Odyssey Zine #1

Wednesday, March 26th, 2025 06:06 pm
stepnix: chibi Shin Godzilla (Default)

I wrote an article for the new Odyssey zine! It's an intro to the Far Roofs, specially written for people who don't know the game at all.

Enjoy!

stepnix: Purple shepherd's crook (shepherd)

I'm going to tell you about a bunch of games by Jenna Moran!

FOR FANTASY FANS: These are games with complex symbolic landscapes, a million little glimpses into larger stories, and they're literally designed for building OCs with strong personal aesthetics.

FOR TTRPG FANS: These games are largely diceless, with strong narrative infrastructure, and plenty of fuel for drama that can't be simply be solved through combat

You WILL have extended philosophical debates during play. This is a significant appeal for my particular circles.

Nobilis and Glitch

These are the stories of the Age of Pain, and the war between Creation and the void... )

Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, and the Far Roofs

These are the stories of... what comes after. )

The Community

The Apocynum Press Itch collection gathers homebrew and fan materials that get posted to Itch.

Karma Chameleon is a pillar of the community. As well as their lovely art, they've made the Quest Set builder for managing Chuubo's and Glitch quests, and an interactive overview of recurring miraculous traits.

Here on Dreamwidth, we have the Jennafans Community!. On Discord, there's the Ninuan fan server.

Jenna Moran herself can be found at her personal site, Tumblr; and on Patreon, where she sometimes posts draft or preview material for the games mentioned. Her older fiction can be found at the Hitherby Dragons wiki

Finally, The Flood is not set in any of these worlds. It's a game about something else entirely (poetry farming). But it does feature its own version of the recurring Arcs scaffolding, so it may be worth a look.

Heart-Eater

Sunday, January 5th, 2025 09:48 pm
stepnix: chibi Shin Godzilla (Default)

Heart-Eater, who is named Hollow, my Far Roofs homebrew for the Rooftop Library Jam, is now published!

There's two parts here: a Mystery (a major NPC and possible boss fight) and a group storyline (a smallish campaign or major arc) associated with it. I had a lot of fun writing this and I hope that comes through when you read it!

stepnix: Purple shepherd's crook (purple)

I'm gonna run a homebrew jam for the Far Roofs!!!

This was surprisingly easy to set up! We'll see how it turns out. Sharing this around would be appreciated, since my social media presence is... very limited

stepnix: Player One (break)

The Chosen Heir

You don't even want to be here! It's those pesky crows who showed up with those trinkets and flowers and notes that said the Crow Prince was looking for a consort. How were you supposed to know how crow courtship works? You have to tell them that it was all just a big misunderstanding!

The Foundling

Your home is gone. It got swallowed up by the Outside, or some similar irreversible disaster. The rats took you in, they've been very kind to you, but, you think it's time you stood on your own two feet.

The Savior

Once, someone close to you disappeared. It broke your heart, but, you knew you had to move on... except, now you have a chance to get them back. Climb the Roofs, find where they were taken, and then...? Well, you have plenty of time to figure things out before that happens.

Read more... )

Froofs hours

Friday, December 6th, 2024 11:59 pm
stepnix: Purple shepherd's crook (pastoral)

The Far Roofs is now out on Itch (digital) and DTRPG (digital+Print on Demand)

I really really want this game to succeed.

Maybe it's because i've successfully dived down the Jenna Moran rabbit hole this year, maybe it's because I'm running a campaign of it, maybe it's because I'm just that charmed by it's mechanics, idk.

I'm thinking of how Chuubo's got a lightning-in-a-bottle sustained community. there's a homestuck hack for it. there's like, a mini-canon of fan comics. That's really really good for an indie rpg.

Far Roofs has a lot of overlap with Chuubo's but there's enough differences that it might have a fundamentally different appeal? By which I mean, I don't know if that Chuubo's fandom is going to now be a Chuubo's+Froofs fandom. It's not as player-driven, it's a slightly more traditional fantasy, it has enough props that it's tricky to play online (I'm making it work tho).

However: this is a very very good game, in some ways created to be a more accessible alternative to Chuubo's, and I want people to give it a chance. I've made a tool to make it easier to play online. I'm considering homebrewing for it to spark a third-party scene of some kind. that's not normal for me. I don't do that.

2019+ seems to be drawing to a close. I don't know what comes next. bluesky i guess. I don't know what social media infrastructure would support a Far Roofs community (unless you all on DW decide to hop on that would be rad actually).

but i want to make it easier somehow

Far Roofs online

Friday, October 11th, 2024 07:05 pm
stepnix: Purple shepherd's crook (shepherd)

I made a VTT setup for the Far Roofs! It is extremely basic and mostly just serves the function of "holds scrabble tiles, cards, and dice, all at once." I might look into putting it on my Itch or something but for now it's mostly just a personal tool.

It only took like a day to pull this together, which was a little surprising since I don't think of myself as... particularly good at online DIY. But! It's perfectly functional, and I'm leaving up the option to clone it if others want to try adding more to my baseline.

Check it out here

stepnix: Purple shepherd's crook (shepherd)
I wrote up Lilith as a Mimic(?) for Glitch and technically also Nobilis 4e by extension
I guess this counts as homebrew and/or microfiction???

A prologue )

(This is probably incomplete without a definitive build and/or specific estates, but I did write up some guidelines for what her stats represent.)

The Lost Lady of Eden in Play )

yeah

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