History of our Role-Playing Systems

Our first Role-Playing System (RPS) was Mano a Mano (MaM,) which went through at least several versions over the space of a decade. It was older than Squawk or The Dark Woods, and MaM's development was driven by those games. Frustration from working on one-size-fits-all RPS for so long led to a joke RPS called MiniMaM (not to be confused with the Pygame demo of the same name which we also made,) but that turned into a serious RPS called Scratch. Scratch's simplicity allowed us to finish the 1st Edition of Squawk, as well as put The Dark Woods together. Moving on past Scratch is exactly what is making the 2nd Edition of Squawk take so long to complete.

Squawk 2E: player direction

 We are keeping  the GM around for the Squawk 2nd Edition core rule book (but are seriously considering making a supplement that is player vs. player/team vs. team/no-GM-allowed like The Dark Woods.)  With the 2nd Edition version of "Eye for an Eye" (the campaign that comes with the book,) we are trying to use less random tables and us more player choice for determining how the plot unfolds (almost like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.) This means we are doing a lot of editing for readability (out loud) and otherwise tweaking the campaign to be as GM friendly as possible.

Nefarious lost in the woods

Nefarious will not return to Squawk 2nd Edition because she is exactly the same character as "The Old Crow," a major character in The Dark Woods. We started working on Squawk while we were first developing The Dark Woods, which is why the character was in both settings. We are tweaking and refining the setting in the Squawk 2nd Edition in other ways as well.

Squawk 2E Update: RPS, part 3

Making character development more balanced highly influenced this 2nd version of the Squawk RPG's core game mechanics much earlier on in development than with previous role-playing systems we have worked on. Back to that "size = damage" concept alluded to in our last post, it makes sense from a narrative standpoint to have one weapon (say a katana) do a lot more damage than another weapon (like a ninja throwing star.) In a lot of role-playing systems it's easy to generate characters with character points overly invested on the ninja stars instead of katanas, throwing off the over all balance of the game. In the Squawk RPG 2nd Ed. we've erred on the side of fool-proofing over flexibility; it should be a lot harder to screw up your character by misappropriating CP. (This is to a greater degree than in the "Scratch RPS" that the 1st Ed. and The Dark Woods is based on.)

Squawk 2E Update: RPS, part 2

In the past when we have made role-playing games, we have usually started off with game mechanics in an effort to make a sort of "universal" role-playing system, and then applied that universal system to a specific setting. However this time with the Squawk 2nd Edition, we focused on making sure the setting has come first, and that the rules serve to describe the setting.

For example, in Squawk the main factor that determines how much damage a character does is the size of his species (because we are talking about intelligent dinosaurs here.) In the Squawk 2E RPS rules the biggest factor for character damage in indeed the size of his species (even though this might not make sense in a typical fantasy RPG setting for example where all the PC races are some variation of hominid.)

Squawk 2E Update: RPS

With the Squawk 2nd Edition, we've decided on a role-playing system that is more visceral than Scratch. (It is almost like a highly simplified updated version of Mano a Mano heavily influenced by Scratch.) Unfortunately this will add at least months to Squawk 2E development, and we'll be lucky to have the game done this year. We will post here on the blog as we are looking for proof readers and play testers.

TDW Reference Document

We want as many people playing The Dark Woods Role-Playing Game as possible, so we have put enough of The Dark Woods up on our content wiki so that anyone can play the game. We still want you to buy The Dark Woods to support our efforts, but even if you don't we still want you the play The Dark Woods. Also this wiki version should be a handy resource even for those who normally use the paper book, even though it doesn't have all the content the book and PDF does.

Tommy reviewed The Dark Woods

Our favorite Role-Playing Game critic, Tommy Brownell, has reviewed The Dark Woods here:
http://mostunreadblogever.blogspot.com/2012/06/tommys-take-on-dark-woods.html

We think it is a fair review and an accurate assessment of The Dark Woods RPG. Yes, in case you are wondering, it was originally a board game design (a board game/RPG hybrid, the original prototype in the early/mid 90's used a lot of 3x5 cards.)

Two for the price of one

If you buy the Soft-Cover version of The Dark Woods core rule book ($7.99,) the PDF is now FREE (now normally $3.99.)

The Dark Woods in soft cover print

You can now get The Dark Woods in soft-cover format from DriveThruRPG here: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/101224/The-Dark-Woods The core rule-book is $7.99 , the PDF is $4.99, and together they are only $9.99 .

Knights of The Dark Woods

Tired of always being labeled "the bad guy?" Want to know more about the mysterious "Order of Thanatos" alluded to throughout The Dark Woods RPG? Wait no longer, now you and your team members can play Knights of the Order of Thanatos here: Order of Thanatos (team association)

Squawk 2E under development

We have officially started working on the 2nd Edition of the Squawk Role-Playing Game. We seriously intend to finish before the end of the summer, we know exactly what we want to do with it (make it easier for GMs to use: more scripted, less spaceship combat.) We are looking for volunteer proof readers (between 150 to 200 pages,) so if you can help with this please e-mail squawk@gameartsguild.com