Straining the Rigging…

A customs official with a fondness for wine had let slip word of the Trepidation, a fluyt carrying tonnes of sacks of bat guano mined from Teboa’s cave systems. Some gentle persuasion in an alley behind the tavern helped the customs man recall the Trepidation’s intended port. Nursing a bruise or two and a headache, the man would be back at duty the next day, but by then, the Courser would be well underway in pursuit…

Orange-red and blinding, the sun crested the horizon, its rise echoed by three bells; an hour and a half into the morning watch. With any luck the crew of the sloop, the Courser, would sight the sails of the Trepidation before eight bells called the forenoon watch to their posts. The Trepidation had been running for three days, but the Courser had a strong wind, and her crew had been bending every yard of sail to make ground.

This was no simple raid, naturally the Courser meant to take as much from the Trepidation as possible, but that guano was destined for the manufacture of saltpetre, and saltpetre is used to make gunpowder. Any chance to stick one to the Alderil Empire was a chance gladly jumped at. Stealing a shipment that would end up as gunpowder was a golden opportunity to kick the Empire, the fact they would make money doing it was just a little extra shine on what promised to be an excellent day.


Corsairs is the next Micro-Role Playing Game to be released by Caradoc Games. It’s a game of piracy and high-action, a game of sky ships and broadsides, of boarding actions and loot. A game of empires, whose exploitation and depredations have driven many to take to the skies as Corsairs, and fight back!

Corsairs is a unique and simple game system, with players rolling both Skill and Difficulty Dice. Characters are quick to make, and the mechanisms designed to encourage high-action adventures. Exploding skill dice, conditions like ‘Charmed’ and ‘Cursed’, and the use of ‘Luck’ are all key parts of the game.

In Corsairs, the mighty sky ship is just as important as the characters, and each ship has it’s own sheet. Corsairs includes rules for ship-to-ship actions, gaining loot, attempting running repairs, and the upkeep of the ship.

Playtesting…

Every aspect of Corsairs is designed to be thematic, fun, and yet simple and streamlined. Characters gain experience and may improve their skills, and the game is designed to be played over 4 to 8 game-long campaigns, or through standalone adventures.

I’m still in the process of trimming and editing, and when the game is finished (which is planned to be early in November) it will include all the usual RPG rules, rules for ships and loot, a number of stat blocks for NPCs, and an adventure.

I’m planning for Corsairs to the first of the games I have released to have a set minimum price, probably something like $2.99 or $3.99. Patreon supporters will, of course, get the game for free!

It’s a Small World On RPGs…

This week I was a guest on the OnRPGs Podcast with the inestimable Donald Dennis. If you’re interested, I’m on episode 76: It’s a Small World.

Don and I talk about a range of things, but mostly about my games, and about creating micro-RPGs. Don has a wealth of experience, apart from being a regular GM and player, Don also worked for Iron Crown Enterprises back in the day and has a history with RPGs that runs deep. It was (as it always is), a lot of fun chatting. We’re hoping to catch up and and record ourselves creating a game together at some stage in the future, which should be good fun!


A quick reminder that my game, Owlbear Omelette, still features in the Colludium One bundle of RPGs, available both on DriveThruRPG and Itch.io.

This bundle is a fantastic chance to grab a bunch of different, interesting, and funny small press role playing games! Get on it, the bundle won’t be up for too much longer!

Laying it all out…

If you ever find yourself Googling ‘How many fonts are too many fonts’, chances are you’ve already used too many fonts. At the moment I am working on my next micro-RPG, tentatively called ‘Corsairs’, and I’m moving out of my MS Word based comfort zone, and delving into the deep waters of Affinity Publisher.

Affinity Publisher is a program designed to do, essentially, what In-Design does, it’s a publishing program with a whole bunch of functions and features that I am unfamiliar with, and do not understand. Making the leap from Word, where I can make something that looks pretty reasonable (at least to my untrained eye), and into the murky waters of a desktop publishing program has been enlightening, frustrating, tear-inducing, and invigorating. Yes, it’s been a roller-coaster.

No cover image yet…

Corsairs has been an interesting project, essentially I am working on two very different drafts. The first is the draft of the rules and game itself, and the second is a draft of playing with the program and trying to get it to do things. The first is ground I feel comfortable on, and the second has been a struggle, I won’t deny it.

Luckily for me there are a whole bunch of tutorial videos on the Affinity website, which has been a massive help. I also downloaded the Affinity Publisher Beginner’s Guide, by Nathanael Roux, which was very informative, and came with a bunch of backgrounds and fonts that have been very useful! I would highly recommend Nathanael’s guide, not only does it come with useful resources, it is also a great source of general information about the program itself.

So why make the leap? I suppose it’s because I wanted to stretch myself, and to try and make the games I’m releasing look a little more professional and well put together than they have in the past. Am I succeeding? Well, I am not familiar with the ins and outs of visual design, but I am slowly coming to grips with the program, and I am enjoying the flexibility it offers. This was something I had been intending to do for a little while, but have been putting it off. I’m glad I finally made the leap. While I’m sure that the games I release will still undoubtedly look like they were put together by an amateur (no denying it), I think that as a whole, they will look better produced than what I had been releasing previously.

Little details, like the ease of adding art to the document, the ability to create Master Pages, and the capacity to use the background around the document to make templates and tables you can copy and use throughout are all elements I am enjoying. I am even slowly becoming more familiar with such terms as kerning, who would have thought it!

I have been enjoying using Affinity Publisher, and I am strongly considering getting Affinity Designer to go along with it. All the box outlines and diagrams in Corsairs I have drawn in Corel Painter Essentials, but the capacity to shift between Publisher and Designer is something that really has me curious.

Affinity Publisher is an excellent program, and while learning it (and I am still learning it) has been a roller-coaster, it is pretty straightforward to use, and offers a lot of flexibility. Having struggled through creating something close to a working draft of Corsairs, I think I would find it hard going to turn back to Word. Affinity is well worth the entry price, and I’d thoroughly recommend it to anyone.

The beginnings of a character sheet takes form as a Master Page which I can drop in anywhere. No matter where it appears in the document, any alteration to the master page alters them all. A great and very useful feature!

Corsairs will be, I think, the next game released by Caradoc Games. It is coming together nicely, but more about that in another post…

200 Word RPG Challenge

200 words. 200 words is not many when your fingers tend to run away with you. My fingers tend to run away with me, but I’m always up for a challenge, and it presents an opportunity to do something a little different.

The 200 Word RPG Challenge has been running annually since 2015, and it’s on now! If you have ever harboured an interest in design or RPG writing, if your an old hand, or even if you’re bored and just looking for something to do, check it out and get involved!

Constraints, like a word limit, specific theme, the need to include certain features, whatever they are, are a great way to foster and inspire creativity.

Head over to the website and join in! This years entrants are being added as they are submitted and can be found here. On their site you can also find entries from previous years. I haven’t looked at them all, not even close, but the ones I have looked at are all clever. Some are deep, some are funny, some are zany, and all of them make you wonder how a person can pack so much into so many words.

My entry is called ‘A Load of Cobblers’, and is about a group of fantasy realm cobblers talking, well, cobblers (yes, not quite what the phrase ‘Load of Cobblers’ refers to, but there are links I tells ya!).

I’m sure it won’t place, but writing it was fun enough!