Post One

Battleaxe Fantasy Role-Play is a fantasy medieval tabletop role-playing game that I'm writing. It's a project I work on in between jobs, sometimes in the evenings and on the weekends. I've been playing role-playing games for almost 30 years and think that I enjoy thinking and talking about role-playing game design more than actually playing them. Maybe that's because I haven't had a regular gaming group in 5 years. It's easier to think about how a game works than go through the steps necessary to form a group and play.

The name is a rip on those other role-playing games with weapons in the titles, a light-hearted joke. It's a skills based game that uses the d10 roll and keep system. All the adventurers are Human and are split by their Homelands (Town or Wilderlands) and their Family (Clergy, Nobility, Outcast, Peasants). Medieval history is an interest of mine but this is not a medieval life simulator; Careers for the adventurers include the mundane Fighter and Rogue as well the fantastical Artificer and Sorcerer.

All of the art in the game is from the public domain. I've spent a lot of time tracking down the sources of the images used to properly credit the artists. Some evenings, as way to unwind from work, I'll spend a few hours isolating an image from a source book. Here's one I did this evening, from LE COSTUME HISTORIQUE, Vol 6, pg 21. The designs are from the 18th century but I think they could work as spot artwork in the game.

There's an Any% version of the game hosted at itch.io at the link above. I find that it's easier to make progress on the game by writing different chunks at a time. For example, I first wrote out all of the spell names I wanted, then I wrote a one sentence description of each spell. After that I wrote full descriptions for them. The most recent additions are the item and monster generation tables and rules. The monster descriptions themselves are mostly blank spaces right now.

I want to make a character sheet that the Referee uses during play to track the party and the campaign. When I play a game I often look to what's on my character sheet for what I can have my character do. I make cheat sheets for myself when I GM that fulfil a similar purpose and think the Ref/Campaign sheet can be a really useful living document for playing the game.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog and my game.