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Hi there!

Brains: Mental acuity. Use Brains to outsmart a threat, focus on ingenuity to overcome an obstacle, or use your knowledge to seek clues about something.

Brawn: Physical might. Use Brawn  to climb a cliff, move a heavy barrier, or hold on tight as your dragon is flying through a storm.  

Grace: Nimbleness (usually physical, but not always). Use Grace to hop across ice floes without falling in, quickly weave through dense underbrush, or bow and flatter your way across the royal ball without anyone realizing there's a dragon tucked into your tunic.

Heart: Determination and emotional resilience. Use Heart to resist a wizard's fear-based magic, talk down a bounty hunter, or convince an angry adult dragon that you and your baby dragon are not a threat to their territory.

This is how I think about these attributes, but they are open to some interpretation. In the game, the attributes are described only by their names for two reasons. First, it saves space so the game more easily fits on a single page. Second, which attribute to use is mainly about a player's description and a discussion of what's happening. There are lots of gameplay cases where an uncertain moment could use any of two or three different attributes; talk about it and agree on one. It's fine if a Keeper tends to assert attributes they're better at; they all incur the cost of wearing down those die sizes and increasing the pressure to rest.

Rope and 'Exploring': Exploring is traveling through unfamiliar locations. (A group can flex that definition, if they want.) Not all exploring will need a check -- walking along a road or trail is not dangerous enough or dramatic enough to consult the dice -- but when exploration gets dangerous or dramatic, you'll probably want to ask for a check or two. In cases like this, were there's a check in service of traveling unfamiliar locations, a Keeper takes +1 if they rely on their rope for that check.

For example, let's say a Keeper is walking along a narrow ridge in strong winds. If they want to use their rope to tie themselves to an anchor point, they can roll with their rope's die instead of an Attribute; and, since they're rolling in service of traversing the environment, they get the +1 bonus. If a Keeper is using rope for some other purpose, such as tangling a monster's legs to escape it, they can still roll the rope's die, but since this isn't exploring they don't get the +1 bonus.

Hi, thanks so much for the comment and feedback! (And thanks for spotting those typos, I'll fix them.) Glad to hear you enjoyed the read!

Sibling Combo: When one Brawler takes the talent, that Brawler AND their sibling have access to the sibling combo. As long as one sibling gives one of the inputs, the other sibling can use the combo when giving the remaining input, regardless of whether they're the sibling with the Talent. (If two Brawlers take this Talent, they can choose each other and they'll each have access to two different sibling combos.)

Park: You are right that double 10s (the only way to get a result of 20) is a CRIT!!, so "15-20" is wonky. The intention is to allow a Brawler, in the unlikely event of rolling double 10s, to be able choose the second result instead of the third result if they want a Flexible Item instead of a Special Item. If I were to rewrite this rule, I would have higher results stipulate that Brawlers can choose a lower result, if they'd rather gain something that's less lucrative in general but more specifically suits their current preferences.

Thanks! The class still needs more playtesting for balance purposes, so the numbers on Crane Stance might be a little off. The current values were chosen so that they didn't overshadow other defensive options, such as the Barrier spell.

Hi! Glad you're liking the game.

Jolly Co-operation: A friendly NPC summoned this way is Level 1 and has a random Class, as a way of succinctly giving the player some stats to work with (3 HP and MP, 2 Strength, a random Power and HP/MP boost). I didn't intend to give friendly NPCs Sunlight Drink or other Items, but the rules are ambiguous, nothing says they can't have or use Items, and it would be a little inconsistent to use only some of the Hollow's character setup list. Short answer, NPCs can have starting Items like the player character would. Just keep in mind that they can't gain more Items during play ("you" refers only to the player character when the rules mention gaining Items and Souls), and they are limited by the same rules as the Hollow when using Items and Powers. On that note, a character may use Items or Powers up to [their level] times, but not Items and Powers in the same turn. The Hollow and their NPC allies use Items and Powers separately (you are not using their Power, they are), but since they are Level 1, they can only use a Power (or an Item) once per round.

Each round of combat, dice pools are rolled for each side of the combat, so if you have an NPC helping you, roll the group's dice together and pair them off against the enemy side's dice as you like. (Or, simply deal damage based on dice showing 4+ if using the Furtive Grasp rules.) 

The first rule in resolving dice pairs says that the lower die's owner takes damage; if you want to be technical about it, you might roll the Hollow and the NPC separately (or with different-colored dice), keep track of how they all pair against the enemy, then deal damage accordingly. But personally, I would just  distribute the damage between allied characters as you like. (And in case of Furtive Grasp rules, you kinda have to do this, since the enemies don't roll dice.)

Randomizing Realm Creation: your idea sounds pretty cool! For Embers of Morndrin, I stayed fairly minimalist about building out the world mechanically, but it's definitely open to experimentation and add-ons. If you do try out your idea, please let me know how it goes!

Wow, thank-you so much! This was an immensely fun jam to be a part of, and the accolades are a huge honor.

Excellent safety tool, especially for online play. For an online convention game I ran, I put the spreadsheet version of this into a google doc, shared the link with my players, everyone could anonymously edit the sheet, and we were ready to go in a few minutes. Fantastic utility, thank-you for making and sharing it.

Looks great!

Highlights:

• Taking on an injury or a flaw is a nice way to lean into the pirate genre
• The use of public domain art

Constructive Criticism:

• The Meet the Pirates section coming before the The Rules section means that a reader is either looking at the characters with little context for what most of their stuff means, or they're flipping past the characters to learn how the game works before flipping back.
• A couple of different fonts might help the graphic design evoke the era, like a distressed font for display text and a serif font for body text.

Incredibly polished look, style, and voice. Gray Man would defs be a fun hang.

Hell yeah! I love a toolkit, and I could see this being useful for designers, in use alongside the official Havoc engine one.

Overall looks super cool! But to give a bit of constructive criticism on the layout/organization:

• Placing the Characters section before the How to Play section means a reader is looking at all this character info without context, or is skipping past the character section and flipping back to it after learning the basics
• The body text is relatively slow/difficult to read

This looks cool as hell. Tight theming and premise, straightforward Havoc Engine mechanics, and fantastic art.

Sorry about the confusion. If this is not what you're looking for and would like a refund, creators unfortunately can't issue refunds themselves (far as I know), but you should be able to make it happen by contacting support.

Hi! This is a ttrpg (pen, paper, dice). The pdfs are the game.

Hi! For this game, all you need is the document itself, a pencil, and a bunch of six-sided dice. Embers of Morndrin comes with the base rules of the game and a pre-written assemblage of regions and encounters to play through. There are also tables to help you randomize any extra NPCs, items etc if you like. Extra tools (like oracles and such) might be helpful to build out some fiction and description (this is not a very fiction-heavy game on its own), but all rpg materials needed to play are in the book.

Good question, it is a little ambiguous.

When I wrote the rule, how you've described it was the intention. Fighting two foes with a strength of 4 each is essentially fighting one foe with a strength of 8. While their strength is combined, their HP pools aren't, so as soon you reduce one foe to 0HP, the foe side has 4 strength. But yes, running into two foes without a certain level of strength and/or HP pretty much guarantees a bad time. Mirroring the Dark Souls inspiration, it's intentionally brutal and stacked against the player.

All that said, I think I prefer the way Jake Zemeckis handles this! It remains punishing on a bad roll, but it isn't guaranteed to hurt you a lot even if you roll well. IMO Jake's version is probably the more fun way to handle double enemies using furtive grasp rules.

This is awesome! Glad you're enjoying my little game. I appreciate sharing the typos you caught, and thanks as well for sharing your experience and pics of your setup! :)

Hi, about this project's inclusion in a compilation document. I'm fine with it being included, credited with my itch handle. But only if this project (at 10 pages long) doesn't, like, dwarf the other projects that would be in the shared doc.

Hehe, thanks :)

Hey, just wanted say thanks for the SRD! It's a great, compact system, and I recently used it as a basis for a one-page game, 59.

Thanks so much!

A print-friendly version is in the works.

Thank-you! I'm excited to check out your games, too. I had a great time playing Little Dung Guy last year so I was happy to see Sleepy Badger pop up in this Jam's submissions.

Thanks so much, Euan, for playtesting and for the praise!

Thanks so much!

Thanks so much!

Hey, thanks! I'll admit that this game is only lightly based on the real-world history. I took the premise and spun it out into something more fantastical. 

I figured it'd be handy to have a thread sharing SRDs and other frameworks to help springboard the game-making process. Here are a few (free) SRDs I'm currently reading and considering.

Passkey, by Penflower Ink. The focus here is that when facing a decision point, a player can either rely on the dice with a luck roll, or choose to succeed by spending a finite resource (Effort Points): the more EP spent, the fewer strings attached to their success. https://penflower-ink.itch.io/passkey-srd

Lumen, by Gila RPGs. Lumen uses d6 pools, weapons, powers, and round-to-round health/energy drops to produce tactical but fast conflicts inspired by video game action shooters. The Lumen games I've seen are a bit more complex than a one-page limitation, but a small make would probably fit. https://gilarpgs.itch.io/lumen

Breathless, by Fari RPGs. In Breathless, stats are associcated to a size of polyhedral die, with roll-high success (5+ is full success, 3-4 is success with complication, 1-2 is failure). Each time you use a stat for a roll, its die ticks down by one size, gradually wearing out your character. You can "catch your breath" at any time to restore your original dice, at the cost of the GM moving in a big way. https://farirpgs.itch.io/breathless-srd

CaltropCore, by titanomachyRPG. CaltropCore features d4 dice pools, with each value on the d4 mapping to a different tier of success/failure. The SRD outlines two different modes of play: stat-driven, where a host of stats will tell you how many d4s to roll; and token-based, where you build a dice pool out of tokens spent to better your odds. https://titanomachyrpg.itch.io/caltropcore

Please feel free to share any other system / game design toolkits you're familiar with!

Community copies are added when this title (or the base game) are purchased. Which just happened today! I've added a few community copies.

Hi! Glad you're enjoying my little game.

Furtive Ash is handy for the following situations:

• If you used Running Away / Running Past rule to escape a previous encounter, and you don't want to attempt the same on the way back to the Bonfire
• During a fight when you're concerned you may die, and you don't want to leave escape up to the luck of the dice
• Escaping Bosses, since you can't use the Running Away / Running Past rule in fights with them

Thanks so much! I had a lot of fun with this concept. And yeah, since the game is about specific regional language I wanted to make sure it was accessible to people beyond that region.

Hi! I'm Jake (RollForThings), a Canadian from the Muskoka region living abroad in Taiwan. I enjoy designing and writing games, especially one-pagers and ttrpgs in the "story game" sphere. I'm Magicalflyingart's partner and we've collaborated on a few projects as co-designers and as a designer-artist team. Excited to get into some specifically Canadian inspirations for game-making!

Me again with some good news! I had some free time recently and made some cards for the various types of Equipment, you can check them out here! 

By the way, would you like me to credit you on the project page for the suggestion?

Hey, thanks for the detailed feedback! Squire is definitely still rough in places, and I'm considering fully replacing one or two of the Skills. I'm gonna be fairly hands-off with the Class until it goes through some playtesting, but all feedback is greatly appreciated and I'll take it all into consideration when I do a revisit. I'm pretty glad that my design goals for the Squire came through -- you spotlighted them exactly!

Hey, thanks! Glad to hear this little project is useful.

I hadn't thought of cards for weapons, but that's a good idea! I'll put it in on the to-do list. :)

Community copies are added when someone purchases this title or its base game. I've just added a few copies at time of writing this comment, feel free to snag one.

Thanks! TBH I had the idea a little while before I found this jam, this was just the excuse I needed to sit down and make it.

Amazing, thank-you!

Would it be possible to extend the duration of the jam, just a little bit? I think I can get my project done in time for the current deadline, but December has been a busy month and less crunch over the weekend would be awesome.

A delightful, humorous romp of a game. I had an excellent time playing a one-shot of this with my group. The shifting GM role was a lot of fun and let the normally-players of the group try out running a game in bite-sized bits. Great stuff!

Awesome! Aw man, I love seeing how people set up their tables, and using dice to track the numbers is a great idea (there's lots of writing/erasing in this game). And yeah, it's definitely an opportunity for people to test their vast quantities of dice. 

Speaking of, another part of the supplement is a rules variant that uses less dice, which I'm going to release early for playtesting. Essentially, just the player rolls dice, with 4+ counting as success vs enemy Strength as a flat value, and a few other rules are tweaked to mesh with foes not rolling dice. This variation is focused on streamlining solo play, but if you give it a read/try please let me know what you think!

Hey, thanks for playing my game, and an extra thanks for telling me about it!

1. Running back to the Bonfire is completely unrestricted. You can do it as much as you want. This means, just like the in the video games it's inspired by, a player is free to farm the first zone and over-level themselves. However, it gets more and more expensive to level up the more you do it (three times your current level) and enemies in later Realms drop more Souls per Encounter. Ideally, a player gets bored/impatient with the weak stuff and moves forward, but when that happens is up to the player. Some players want a safer experience than others.

2. Brutal is meant to trigger when the Hollow has zero successful or tied matchups in a round. Leftover Hollow's dice that don't find pairs are effectively discarded.

3. The intention with Volatile is that rerolls allow the damage to be avoided. The Hollow decides in which order the conflicting dice pairs resolve (p3), but the rules aren't clear about when non-dice things resolve. Thanks for mentioning this, I'll try to update the rules for greater clarity.

4. The Lost Soul and Hidden Cache secrets work as you interpret them: you can gather up to RN+1 of that thing over the course of several Bonfire resets. I wrote it this way to emulate hidden drops that scale up as you reach tougher areas in Dark Souls, and to pepper the gameplay with several rewards over try-die-repeat attempts rather than a one-time lump sum and then an empty Encounter after. An alternate rule, "you find [RN] Souls/Items (does not reset)" might vibe better with some players, but I haven't tested the idea yet. I'm also working on a supplement that introduces more impactful, found-once-only items, which might scratch that itch. That should come out later this month.

Once again, thanks! Feedback means a lot to me, and I'm always happy to answer questions.