All posts by Aaron Marks

Gaming for nearly twenty-five years and writing about it for over fifteen, I've always had a strong desire to find different and interesting things in the hobby. In addition to my writing at Cannibal Halfling Gaming, you can follow me on Bluesky at @levelonewonk.bsky.social and read my fiction and personal reflections at newwonkmedia.com.
Articles, Level One Wonk

“You can Homebrew D&D into Anything!”

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The strong increase in popularity of Dungeons and Dragons brought about both by the increased accessibility of D&D’s Fifth Edition as well as the growth of the nascent streaming and actual play communities has meant that there are a whole lot of people getting introduced to D&D. Now that this growth has been going on for a few years, there is burgeoning realization that role-playing games as a medium are capable of a lot more than dungeon crawls and Tolkien derivatives. This is great news for everyone, right? We all know there’s a whole world of RPGs out there, from the big glossy traditional games to indie zines and everything in between. Well, something’s getting lost in translation for some, and in the #dnd world on Twitter you’ve likely seen questions like this:

“How can I make John Wick in D&D?”

“What can you do to run Star Trek in D&D?”

“It would be really cool if I could run Harry Potter in D&D!”

Fortunately, these all have easy answers: Don’t, please don’t, and I don’t think it would.

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Articles, The Independents

#iHunt Review

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“Hitting close to home” is not necessarily a goal of most game design. When meditating on the dominance of D&D, one could logically conclude that being as far away from home as possible is what people are into these days, even when that particular brand of fantasy is getting a bit creaky. It’s striking, then, that a game about disenfranchised gig economy workers would make such a big splash on DriveThruRPG, already in the top 10% of all products on the site after only a month. I should mention, though, that this is a game about disenfranchised gig economy workers hunting monsters. The game of course is #iHunt, and its writing and agenda are backed up with a thoughtful and rather complex adaptation of the Fate system. Written by Olivia Hill and Filamena Young, #iHunt takes place in the dark future that is modern society…and very few serial numbers are filed off.

Continue reading #iHunt Review →

Articles, System Hack

System Hack: Cyberpunk Chimera Character Creation

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Welcome back to System Hack! Now that the real timeline has caught up with Cyberpunk 2020, it’s time to start pinning the Cyberpunk Chimera down. We have attributes and skills, we have ideas about a combat system, and there’s some hacking, some cyberware, and even some meta-mechanics. What don’t we have yet? Oh. Right. Characters.

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Articles, Crowdfunding Carnival

Kickstarter Wonk: January, 2020

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Welcome to the first Kickstarter Wonk for 2020! Although January is often a thin month for RPG Kickstarters, with designers suffering the same holiday hangovers as the rest of us, this January, January of 2020, is likely to be the worst one so far. This isn’t random, not at all. Last year, Kickstarter threw an event called Zinequest, where game designers were encouraged to put out zine-sized games and RPG supplements in a recognition of the legacy of RPG zines from the 70s and 80s. This was wildly successful, and inspired Kickstarter to throw Zinequest 2. When is Zinequest 2? Next month. What are all the game designers doing? Getting ready for that. How many campaigns does that leave me? Very few.

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Articles, Level One Wonk

The Decade in Gaming: 2010-2019

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On New Year’s Day, 2010, the RPG hobby wasn’t feeling very lively. Dungeons and Dragons was plodding along with Fourth Edition, though a lot of players had abandoned it for Pathfinder, or, as your friends called it, “D&D 3.75e”. The New World of Darkness was out, but you were having trouble finding the new part. Shadowrun 20th Anniversary came out…but that was just Fourth Edition from 2005 with errata. Though things weren’t looking so hot, there was some interesting stuff going on. This new website Kickstarter had been causing a stir in tech news, and more and more of the games you’ve been looking for had been made available in PDF. Something’s going to change, you think.

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Articles, Level One Wonk

Meet the Party: Cannibal Halfling 2020

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In 1994, Richard Night had a vision for a new modern city. By 2009, that vision had gone awry, and what was supposed to be an urban utopia became an urban hellhole. As Bes Isis once said, “Nobody leaves Night City. Except in a body bag.”

On Christmas Eve, 2019, four enterprising RPG bloggers found themselves at a strange conjunction of parallel dimensions. Whether it was their campaign worlds, their characters, or Aaron’s insistence on reviewing Fate of Cthulhu while writing a time travel game, no one could say. Nonetheless, when they stepped through the strange, neon-colored portals that appeared in their respective homes, Seamus, Aaron, Aki, and Jason could not be less prepared for what lay on the other side.

Continue reading Meet the Party: Cannibal Halfling 2020 →

Articles, Level One Wonk

Fate of Cthulhu Review

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Sent back in time, you must save humanity from its enslavement by a godlike overlord. You must protect John Connor stop Cthulhu! …wait. What? We’ve talked about kitchen sink games before, and this mashup definitely edges towards that territory even while sitting firmly in Lovecraft’s Mythos. If you’ve seen one too many investigator go over the brink, spent one too many hours in a briefing room with Delta Green or can’t seem to get all of these Laundry Files out of your inbox, here’s another angle on Lovecraftian Mythos: Time Travel. That’s right, it’s time to go 30 years in the past to 2020 and help change the Fate of Cthulhu.

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Articles, Editorial

Genesys Expanded Player’s Guide Review

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Every successful RPG must have a strong setting or a strong ruleset. When Fantasy Flight Games hit it out of the park with their trio of Star Wars RPGs, they clearly had a strong setting. As it turned out, though, the system was pretty solid too; the Narrative Dice System had been patched to tone down the excesses of WFRP 3e, resulting in a game that was a good balance between robust and quick, and added a good amount of narrative flair and interesting in-game decisions. It was so good that people were able to overlook the expensive proprietary dice. From Star Wars came Genesys, a generic RPG which truly begs the question of whether the Narrative Dice System can succeed on mechanics alone.

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Articles, Crowdfunding Carnival

Kickstarter Wonk: December, 2019

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Tis the season to be Wonky! December is not always a very busy month for Kickstarter, it’s more important to deliver and sell near the holidays than it is to fundraise, so in some ways this is an off-cycle time for creators who are trying to kick off projects. As such, there are only eight projects in this month’s line-up. That said, we do have a holiday miracle in store, and in just a couple days eight projects will turn into nine! Thanks to a creator who I am a particular fan of, we have access to a project preview that should turn into an honest-to-goodness campaign just a few days after this article’s publication date. While we’re waiting for that, though, the rest of the projects in this article are all quite promising and worthy of your attention.

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Articles, System Hack

System Hack: Cyberpunk Chimera Meta-Game

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Welcome back to System Hack! Over the last few months I’ve been slowly but surely building out elements of a Cyberpunk game, inspired by but not really based on Cyberpunk 2020. At this point, we get into the weeds. Until now, the articles published so far have all dealt with simulationist aspects of the game. That is to say, when a character in the game wants to do something, what happens? At this point, we’re going to pivot away from the characters and focus instead on the players.

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