Grant Howitt

@gshowitt

I make roleplaying games, toy soldiers, and bad decisions. rrdgames.com

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Grant Howitt@gshowitt· 23d

Just the worst dice

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· 27d

I’ve worked out how to make space marines interesting and I regret to inform you that it’s turning templates

Top down photo of my incredibly filthy desk. I’m holding a 90 degree turning template I cut out of foam board above a space marine (actually a stormcast I glued a gun to but shh)

Same thing but the space marine has turned 45 degrees to the right. It’s gonna be fuckin revolutionary lads

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· 29d

A blog about writing and running 30-player, 6-GM games, why it's difficult, and why I refuse to learn from my previous mistakes: www.patreon.com/gshowitt/pos...

TO DIE WOULD BE A GREAT (MEANING LARGE OR IMMENSE) ADVENTURE
I have the DIE RPG to thank for this.

Kieron Gillen, author of same, came with us to GenCon 2024 and had an idea for a big game of DIE that needed thirty people to work correctly, and we did what we could to facilitate that. It was the sort of metatextual onanism that Kieron loves as much as overwrought puns and 90’s alt-pop: he, the noble and valiant indie comic book author Kieron Gillen, was magicked into a roleplaying game by his evil alter-ego, also confusingly called Kieron Gillen, but this one wore a leather jacket so you knew he was a bad guy right from the get-go. He played both.

The thirty players were divided up into six tables of five, each of whom played through the same scenario which involved rescuing their GM from an evil GM, I think? A microcosm of the broader plot, anyway, and - spoilers, I guess - each one of them unlocked one sixth of the magic word needed to defeat the malevolent Leather Gillen.

ON WRITING DIFFERENT THINGS
I get a bit caught up in this stuff, myself. Once I start writing - if things are going well - I get too many ideas, and I want to use them all. I want good bits in everyone’s game. I want to prove to them that I’m a great designer, and not only a game designer, I can design adventures too! I promise! Look!

And: the relationship between what I write and what a player experiences is, perhaps, never more tenuous or brittle. You write a scenario, and you have to communicate it to a prospective GM in such a way that they can remember it, but not feel limited by it, but still definitely run it in a recognisable way. And then they communicate that to the players, who have their own agency, and there’s five of the buggers running around in different directions at any one time. And then we’ve got fucking dice to worry about, so there’s never a sure thing.

That’s just a normal game - now, you do all that six times and have them cross over, and suddenly the GMs are sifting through your notes written four months previously trying to find a way to connect them to this hot afternoon instant in Indianapolis where half the tables have finished early and the other half are nowhere near the end.

But the best thing, bar none, the highlight of my GenCon and most likely my year, was calling together all thirty players in a rousing chant of “DOOM! DOOM! DOOM!” (Doom is an important concept in Orc Borg, being as it is their deliverance to heaven, and as such people started slamming the tables and bellowing it with very little provocation.)

I had uncovered the secret to running a good multi-table game: synchronised yelling.

And why not? It works at football matches! It works in churches! And protest marches, and the military, and concerts, and the bit in Battlestar Galactica where they bark so say we all and you get a bit tingly about the scalp, and groups of people eight beers in outside my flat at 2am, and when you think about it, a solid portion of all human interaction after we worked out how to make noises with our mouths.

Player characters are all shards of five reincarnated saints, or hallows, who’ve been called to the cathedral to defend it against the onslaught of flesh that the Heart is sending in to disrupt the summoning ritual (a ritual which ought to involve some yelling). We’ve got six different Seven Samurai-style defend the town adventures lined up, and all of them have something special going on.

[DISCORD SCREENSHOT, message from Grant] "light update to the Heart scenario on the drive as Sillion has corrected me: the severed angel wings are now only used to power the red nightmare defence robot, not the magical escape moon train as originally intended"

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jul 12

I’ve fucking made it lads. Osprey sent me some frostgrave kits because I asked them nicely. I have made them into some trench dorks with the addition of some ww1 helmets

Three frostgrave cultist bodies with Wargames Atlantic British ww1 heads and arms. And little ponchos. Two of them have rifles and the one in the middle has a pike and shield off the cultists kit

Chorister made out of a frostgrave wizard and a kingdom death knife. I squished some wire flat to emulate the runes pouring out of the neck in the art. I’m not sure about the head and will probably change it to a less healthy-looking one

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jul 11

Digital sketch of Kermit the frog with a wizard hat. He’s pointing a gun - a sig 226 maybe? -and saying “BEHOLD! the most powerful spell of all. Are you ready to meet God?”

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jul 9

Probably the thing with the bears.

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jul 9

superlative illustration work here from @naomithinksit.bsky.social in the RRD monthly newsletter, revealing the decadent underbelly of the TTRPG awards scene and how we're immune to it thank you very much

Screenshot of an email. Text reads:

"We’ve been nominated for an ENnie this year - Minærva got picked for Best Layout in Voidheart Symphony, which makes sense - but, you know. It’s not awards and fancy receptions and firework displays and personalised goody bags and limousines and bespoke cocktails and the thick, luxurious tablecloths they use that do it for us, no: it’s your approval. Because your approval comes with money attached, and no award committee has ever given us a single red cent, and I can’t pay my mortgage in kudos can I.

You’re what matters - not the pyramids of champagne flutes, or the all-you-can-roll D20 fountains, or eating high-grade sushi off Matthew Mercer’s bare chest, or getting access to the special winners-only bathrooms in the Indiana Convention Centre where they smash the toilet to bits with a big hammer after you use it so you know it’s boxfresh porcelain every time. Not those. You. Your love, and the associated fifty quid, is worth all the hummingbird vol au vents in the midwest."

Then there's a photobashed illustration of several of those things, most notably a shirtless Matt Mercer reclining on a chaise lounge beneath some nigiri

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jul 7

Fellow authors: without any context, what's the first line of your current WIP?

YOU WILL NOT UNDERSTAND THIS MACHINE

YOU ARE THE RATS IN THE WALLS

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jul 6

Distressing realisations in the Patreon blog post about the difficulties of multi-table games and, it seems, the inexorable march of time. Members get it a week early here: www.patreon.com/gshowitt/pos...

It is my unfortunate duty to inform you, if you were not aware, that any sufficiently bearded man in a half-mask - as is the mask style we lean into in the books, so you can eat and talk and things - looks like a sex criminal.

(Oh! Wait! I took a picture of myself. In the mask, for the blog, as you can see:

[a picture of me in a leather and gold half-mask with a sort of Martin Freeman mild disgruntle on my face. I'm wearing an old military shirt and grey vest, too, so really I'm not dressed for it]

And I don’t look like a sex criminal any more. Something happened and now I look like someone’s dad wearing a mask. (I guess it’s better than sex criminal.))

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 30

brat gang hnnnngh www.spectreminiatures.com/collections/...

Picture of seven necromunda-style brat gangers - new-romantic lookin' dandies and fops carrying golden pistols

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 29

they should let me write 3DS shovelware

ASPIRATIONAL HANDHELD GAME CARTRIDGE sub-table
1: Imagine Someone Like You Had A Dog
2: What If One Day You Were Entrusted With A Child
3: Wash This Woman’s Hair Immediately
4: Refurbish This House Forthwith
5: You Have Been Permitted To Dance For Your Betters
6: Unfathomably, Someone Of Your Standing Has Become A Doctor

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 29

What's it like in your head

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 29

ah christ I've enough on as it is

Email from Warhammer. Subject line reads "Next Week: Begin Your Conquest of the World of Legend"

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 27

Surprised no-one thought to ask about the horseman. Was he in a bit of The Hobbit that I skipped over maybe

Art from merryshire detective club depicting a shirtless man in leather trousers. Crucially, he has the head and neck of a fucking horse

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 24

the Australians any old shite a lolly. ridiculous business

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 16

I feel the tone dropped off a bit here

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 16

met a very small friend today

Tiny froglet (is that the right word?) I found in the pond today. Easily smaller than my fingernail, upon which it is sitting. They seemed perfectly fine with being handled - I picked a couple up by mistake whilst clearing away algae - and I hope I didn't ruin it with any strange human-borne parasites

same picture again but zoomed in, for better frog

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 12

get the fuck out of my way Pirandello, there's a new big dog in town

THE END

In this game, you will play characters you have previously been in campaigns that didn’t reach a satisfying end point. Maybe someone had a kid, or two of the players split up, or the GM simply lost their stomach for it: whatever happened, you know you didn’t get the ending that you deserved.

Where your player moved on, you remained. You haunted the ruins of your game, robbed of impetus and oversight, and eked out an existence as best you could - but without a guiding light within you or a master’s hand without, you found the world plastic and uncanny.

You are trapped between existence and non-existence, half-real to begin with and growing ever fainter. Over the years, as the group’s collective vision of the campaign withered away, your life became a smear of imperfect memories. All that remains is the unceasing sensation of a story unfinished. That’s all about to change.

One of you found a ritual - this game - that can let you leave your worlds behind. One of you is going to guide the others toward freedom. All of you, finally, are going to witness The End.

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 12

paper dollies for futuristic gang warfare

four cut-out paper standees (about 28mm) representing skull-masked cyberpunk gangers. There's a big fat guy with a revolver, a lanky guy with a chainblade and automatic pistol, a guy in a motorised wheelchair with a hand cannon and a scrawny gollum-coded lad with a big axe

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 11

unfortunately, I wrote this in 2024

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 11

see I already have a back page with a very similar theme (perhaps more slapstick than intended)

A WASP BRIDE FOR SATAN!

YOU are part of a swarm of malevolent wasps jam-packed into MRS METCALFE, the preserved body of a 1960’s American housewife. Thanks to the dark blessing of your lord Satan, you can animate the body by jangling around inside it and bouncing off the sides. It is your unholy duty to lead your dull-eyed neighbours into temptation, to drive them to ruin the promises they made to God, and make upstate New York a beachhead in the war between heaven and hell.

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 11

with a heavy heart I regret to inform you that this might not fly

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 11

- I am maybe - *maybe* - just used to playing the original game on my own and have developed my own style

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 10

we just need some fun names for the stats that aren't too twee and we're off to the races

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 10

"I'm putting together a team of unique individuals for a very special assignment"

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 8

I dunno man. I'm tired.

Whether we skipped the May email on purpose, or we forgot to write it, or we’re moving it forward to now which is technically June, the important thing to remember is that none of this matters and we’re all marching lockstep towards the end in time to entropy’s lunatic thumping drumbeat.

Onward, cur!

Forward, blind and grasping, into the ever-deeper dark!

ARACHNO-NERDS is, and I’m a grown-up so I’m allowed to do copyright infringement, a Spider-Man game. It’s a Disney’s Marvel Spider-Man game. With the hyphen and everything. Doesn’t say it in the text but we all know what’s going on. Come at me, Disney. You send that mouse round here and I’ll break its fucking legs.

They hate us. I can’t quite figure out why - I haven’t done fuck all to them. They’ve come for the trans folks and the sex workers and before long even the token allied homosexual people they keep around to gaywash their exclusionary hatred will be thrown under the bus in a desperate desire to return to a mythic past when you could categorically determine what genitals everyone had at any given time thanks to clearly-defined societal rules.

Because that matters. Because that’ll save us. The fucking dolts.

Here is my Pride statement for 2026 - fuck ‘em. Give no quarter. Cede no ground. We’re here. Love each other. We’re gay, and bisexual, and ace, and trans, and nonbinary, and intersex, and difficult. We’re all the things they don’t want us to be. We’re not going to stop on anyone else’s account and neither should you.

Anyway. Back to the matter at hand. We’re a business and we need you to give us money otherwise we have to stop being a business.

That’s not how it works in the upper echelons - apparently you can just wizard up some cockamamie bullshit concerning this week’s particular flavour of buffered digital slop and people chuck imaginary future money at you overarm to set the planet on fire in order to maybe make it happen - but here we are, making a thing we like and then selling it to you like a bunch of primitives.

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 2

Biggest nod to the genre, I think, is allowing one player to be the main character and surrounding them with gorgeous brooding warriors they're not allowed to touch

THE MORTAL
SPARK 3 ASH 3
One of you is not a Knight; you are a girl from the mortal world, trapped on the wrong side of reality after the Sundering. Your grandmother’s cold-iron amulet protects you from most glamour and trickery - and you cannot remove it willingly - but means you cannot touch the bare skin of a fey without causing them pain. Once, when you would die, instead shatter the amulet.

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 1

- A COURT OF SPARKS AND ASHES - You are a fey knight warring across the remains of a burning kingdom. Can you fall in love so hard you save the world? Or will your selfishness damn the Far Realm to ruin? PDFs, design notes and foldable miniature zine version here: www.patreon.com/posts/court-...

A two-page RPG called A COURT OF SPARKS AND ASHES. Get PDFs and fun zine variants here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/court-of-sparks-159170128

Miniature eight-page zine layout for the game. Don't print this one; there's a PDF version on the website which should work better. Honestly though it's still VERY small. Too small? No. But nearly.

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· Jun 1

Hey man,

Grant Howitt@gshowitt· May 27

you bring me CLOSER TO DOG