#grimwild — Public Fediverse posts

I've been very impressed with the #Grimwild community edition https://groov-games.itch.io/grimwild-community-edition #ttrpg

As well picking up a game whose original creator has vanished, it goes a long way to clarifying a lot of the terse rules in the original - "this is how outcomes work", "this is what this type of pool does", "here is what using magic really means". My players and I had a lot of trouble understanding these points when I ran Grimwild and eventually gave up but I can see us running again with this.

Just learned about the whole #GrimWild #TTRPG Kickstarter situation yesterday. Disappointed, but at least we have the digital releases.

I don't know if I mentioned it but we put the #Grimwild game on hold. While I like a lot of things about it, in the end the basic action structure wasn't gelling with players, particularly in combat ("you aren't rolling to do a specific thing, you're rolling to achieve a goal"). Also it feels like a collaborative approach to consequences and world building is part of what makes the game work, and that part wasn't popular.

Not knocking Grimwild, we enjoyed it and I saved loads of prep time.

I converted the crucibles from #Grimwild to markdown tables usable in #obsidian with the Dice Roller plugin. And here they are: https://daisychase.net/blog/2025/08/03/grimwild-crucibles-for-obsidian/

In my current #Grimwild game the party is being chased by warrior nuns from whom they stole a scroll case. The nuns have magic to let them track said scroll case.

The question is "why haven't they just found and beaten up the party yet" and I decided the answer was that the nuns behave like PCs. They ignore obvious hooks, refuse to talk to locals, get frustrated and start fights, and sometimes forget they can do stuff.

In-world this is justified by them being drunk most of the time too.

One of the rewarding things about running different #ttrpg systems is that you learn from each one and can usually use what you've learned in any other game.

For instance I'm running #Grimwild right now which I like a lot. But as and when I run something else I will have learned lessons about eg improv techniques, pacing devices, and minimum viable prep. What I have learned from GW is also flavoured by what I have learned from previous games.

Since I now need to spend basically zero time on pointless prep as I'm running #Grimwild for my regular game, I'm writing a mini depthcrawl for it. The area is a cursed swamp full of ghosts who will pull out and snip off your soul, but also other horrible things, which you should expect if you go into the cursed swamp at night when people say "don't go to the swamp at night, it's cursed".

I've discovered various ways to have themed "layers" which I will blog after I actually run the thing.

I am definitely finding #ttrpg prep easier and basically more fun and less depressing now that I'm running #Grimwild. It's like I can do the fun parts of "what could happen next" and "let's make up something weird and cool" without the attendant "oh god I have to make a map and come up with statblocks and tokens though" - which has actually put me off really indulging my imagination at times. Also players doing unexpected stuff is a feature not a bug - I know the rules will always support me.

So my latest idea is to ruin #Grimwild using #YoonSuin as a basis.

I want to run some Grimwild but I also don't want to just do that in a similar setting to other games I've run. I did have ideas about using the same background as the PF2 game I ran, but why not run #PF2 if I want to do that? No, something different.

I have all the Thousand Thousand Islands PDFs as well which I may use on top/instead. But they are not campaign settings as such.

(it's odd calling this stuff "campaigns")

I've been playing with the #Grimwild system in #foundryvtt recently and it's really good. Grimwild is a game which doesn't need much automated assistance, but the system helps out with the part where it does - tracking conditions for PCs, lots of useful dice pool stuff (add pools to enemies, create quick pools on the fly, roll either and automatically reduce them) and some drag and drop help for character talents. Really impressed that this has appeared so quickly.

If knowing specific probabilities in a game where knowing specific probabilities really doesn't make any difference is something that interest you, you might like my latest post about the probabilities in the #grimwild #ttrpg (which is really good btw and has a very extensive free version, almost all the game).

https://daisychase.net/blog/2025/02/15/grimwild-dice-odds/

Day two of the Character Creation Challenge 2025 has come for us all, and I'm bringing you something from an RPG in Early Access called Grimwild. I think you'll find it interesting.

https://grimtokens.garden/Articles/Character+Creation+Challenge+2025+-+Day+02+-+Grimwild

#TTRPG #CharacterCreationChallenge #Grimwild