Hello everyone! The Last Fleet kickstarter campaign is now live! Last Fleet is a PBTA game about a rag-tag fleet, fleeing across space from the merciless inhuman foe that destroyed human civilisation. You play brave pilots, officers, engineers, politicians and journalists fighting to keep the fleet – and themselves – in one piece. The game […]
Tag: pbta
Push and pull mechanics
A popular mechanic which crops up in a lot of excellent games is Conditions. A Condition is a problem that’s affecting your character, like “broken leg”, “on fire” or “suspected traitor”. The idea is that the GM will hit you with trouble when your Condition would be relevant, or penalise you when it would get […]
Bite Marks is on Backerkit
We’ve sent Bite Marks off to the printers, which means it’s now available for pre-order if you missed the Kickstarter campaign. Bite Marks is a PBTA game of werewolf pack dynamics. This is a game about being a werewolf, in a Pack. The Pack is a deeply intimate and close family; like a family, sometimes it is full of […]
Designer diary: Last Fleet
I’ve been getting quite a bit of feedback on my current WIP, Last Fleet. In case you’ve missed hearing about it, the game is about the last surviving members of the human race, fleeing across space from an implacable inhuman adversary. The players are brave pilots, officers, politicians and journalists, struggling to keep the fleet […]
Is it ok to fudge rolls?
I was bodding about on Twitter recently and I came across this: Three opinions I always get yelled at about on the internet: 1. D&D is not perfect.2. The GM rolling dice and ignoring the results is a violation of the social contract of RPGs3. Marginalized people deserve to see themselves represented in games. Every […]
48 hours left to back Bite Me! on Kickstarter
Update: Please note that Bite Me was renamed to Bite Marks, after the campaign closed. The game can now be pre-ordered from Backerkit. We have been running a Kickstarter for Bite Me! – a game of werewolf pack dynamics here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackarmada/bite-me-a-game-of-werewolf-pack-dynamics and we are down to the last 48 hours. As you know I love Werewolves and […]
Reflections on play: Pasion de las Pasiones
I was recently lucky enough to get to play Pasion de las Pasiones by Brandon Leon-Gambetta. Pasion is a (currently ashcan-only) PBTA game based on telenovelas. If you haven’t come across telenovelas, my totally uninformed layperson’s summary is: overwrought, over-the-top Latin American soap operas. Now you might be thinking “why would I play a game about that when […]
Bite Me! is coming to Kickstarter – Get on the Mailing List Here!
Update: Please note that Bite Me was renamed to Bite Marks, after the campaign closed. The game can now be pre-ordered from Backerkit. The Bite Me! Kickstarter is getting closer and closer, practically snapping at our heels over here at Black Armada. Bite Me! is a Powered by the Apocalypse Game of werewolf packs and […]
Indie games aren’t all about narrative
I hear a lot of people saying that indie games are more focused on narrative or story. This is said in implicit (or explicit) contrast with traditional games, which are more… I don’t know… gamey? It often flows from the said people having read and (IMO) misunderstood GNS theory. So here’s the thing: it isn’t […]
PBTA – Moves overload
Part of the job of a game designer is to consider the level of cognitive burden and handling time required to run a game, and pitch that at a level which works for the intended audience. I have been noticing recently how that counts in spades for PBTA. The player-facing side of most PBTA games […]