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An example of a Quicksheet

November 7, 2025

Since I got hype for Fallen Blades / Endless Stars, I put together a little quicksheet document in Google Docs and figured it’d be a good example to point to.

How we organize it

Well, I’m using Google Docs because it has a lot of different functions that work well for my game circle; you may find other programs fit your demands better.

Links
My rule for quicksheets is to link the PDF of the rules, link a character sheet, and if we’ve got a VTT or dice roller set up, link that too. (On the character sheet, we link the PDF of the rules, the quicksheeet, the VTT, etc. – redundancy helps!)

Comments
Someone in my group recommended I include page numbers; comments seem like a good way to annotate the information without being directly in the main reference space. When you click on the title, it highlights which comment is tied to it. I’d prefer some kind of hover over note, like Google Sheets allows, but this is fine for what it is.

Tabs / Outline
I didn’t really figure out Google Tabs until earlier this year; they’re actually useful when you have a larger document or completely different sections. In this case, I wanted to split up the setting bit and the rules bits because I wanted to drop mood images in the setting side and the original rules summarize the setting very well in 2 pages – everything is just a screenshot of the original file PLUS a few images I pulled from the internet.

The Outline function of Google Docs is the killer app for a lot of RPG text; it’s just an easy hyperlink set up if you gotta hop around and find different sections quickly. Quicksheets are usually 2-4 pages so there’s not a LOT of need for that here, but I also know my players are going to be looking at rules when they’re tired and distracted; another tool to navigate isn’t going to hurt.

Headlines
Ironically for many games where I do a quicksheet, the breaking up of sections and chunking material is where people get the most benefit from a quicksheet document. In this case, FB/ES is only 40 pages anyway, so it doesn’t need much help at all.

Normally I try to go sparse with underlying, but it has benefit of standing out rather well in small amounts while not eating up extra space on the page. OTOH, it can produce visual fatigue, and only because this is such a short quicksheet am I willing to use it this much. In this example I’m using bulletpoints for the information but on the other two pages I don’t have bullets, just indentations of the body text to make it easier to skim through.

The type of quicksheet you build for a 200 page game vs. a 40 page game has some differences in that regard; your premium on space is different when the source material is already so tight.

Text Images
As you can see from the sample above, I straight up cut and pasted the section about the Mazeblades; it’s a fun bit of art, and a perfect description at the same time. I did the same in the setting section on the two pages breaking down setting.

If I had players who needed screen reader information, we’d be in a different situation, though I suspect it may involve a very different kind of quicksheet at that point.

Background Color
You’ll note I moved the page color to a light grey to reduce eye strain. I personally don’t like looking at full white too long, and given that I see this as a kind of game that the players sorta ignore most of the rules until they come up, they’ll be coming back to it a little often until things internalize.

What you exclude
One of the key parts to a Quicksheet is what you cut out. It’s not designed to be a comprehensive reference for the game, it’s designed to be a thing you can get players up and running within 10-15 minutes and to reference as they learn and play the game.

For that reason, in this case, I completely drop all the rules about the spaceships, about Apprentices, the chase scene mechanics, etc. I do think it’s important to touch on stuff for advancement in games, since it helps players align their actions to their goals.

If a game has an complex subsystem that affects only some of the players (magic is the usual culprit in these things) then it’s either going to be a second quicksheet or a “Look don’t take it unless you’re going to read up on the rules yourself” kind of decision.

The other trick to the Quicksheet
So… why do all this? It makes it easier for the players… and it makes it easier for yourself to run and teach the game. It’s also a thing you can use if you’re not going to get to play the game for months or a year; it’s a little reminder so when that time comes, you can get yourself back up to speed on how the game works in short order.

I know some people like to do the “lonely fun” of prepping adventures and characters for a games, but I find a Quicksheet is more useful of a thing to prep as you read and internalize a game.

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The Best Conflict

October 26, 2025

Last night in our Primetime Adventures game, I saw what was probably the best stakes for a conflict ever.

Our campaign is conceptually like if you took Evangelion and mixed it with Control – people are using power armor to fight supernatural anomalies; the suits are also not safe and have costs to pilots using them.

It’s a flashback scene when one of our protagonists, Saoirse, last saw her (best friend/lover? we’ve been leaving it open) Willa before she died on a mission. They’re fighting some kind of anomaly that copies powers to reflect as attacks, and Willa realizes her suit’s self-damaging berserk mode, if she used it and just let it kill her, the anomaly would copy the “attack” as well and finish itself.

Now, Saoirse also has Lore, a (alternate personality/possessing entity, also left open) in her head. She acquired this self from the high stress of fighting supernatural things for so long and it’s already proven itself to take over and help during high stress situations.

This is a high stress situation.

Another one of our players suggested, “The stakes are who gets to speak last words to Winnie; Saoirse or Lore?”

Ooof. Ah. Damn.

That player got doused with Fanmail tokens.

I think a lot about how many RPG groups want stakes about emotional weight, like that, but the mechanics they’re using focus on physical logistics; how far can you run, did you successfully do the skill or not, etc. which is not to say those are bad rules; they’re bad rules for games where you want to focus in on emotional stakes.

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The dungeon as story vs. the dungeon as game

September 23, 2025

There’s some discussions going on around dungeon crawling in RPGs, especially with stuff like Dungeon Meshi or Frieren being amazing stories that do use dungeons.

However.

I think the thing sometimes people miss is that the dungeons are interesting plot points and set dressing, but the key role they play in those stories is about how they put characters in pressure, splitting them up or trapping them together, including and especially more characters than just the “party”.

In that regard, what you need mechanically, is systems to help focus the spotlight of play on character interaction and development; not a map or logistics around a dungeon. Primetime Adventures, or Universalis, would do better at telling those stories than the dungeoncrawling games, because while the logistics of surviving, outsmarting and beating the dungeon are fun, they’re fun side points to the characters revealing their histories, ideals, fears, and connections to one another.

A long standing tradition that has been in RPGs is the fear of contrivance. Too many mechanics, or too much “how the sausage gets made” might “ruin the fun”. But in RPGs you are the creators as much as the audience; your act of play IS making the story or events in play. And while an exquisite corpse story is surprising, funny and entertaining, it’s also understood that people are to accept the nonsensical outcome, whereas anything more sensible requires some form of coordination and planning; the contrivances needed for it to happen. A good storyteller can hide much of those contivances to the audience, but again, if you’re the co-creators in play, you can’t hide it from yourself.

If you want to reliably see more story and character development, you’ll need to make choices about how play works that puts story and character development ahead of the other things; and, if you chose a system that puts story and character development behind (or not at all considered), you will not see those things consistently. It all revolves around what the point of play is for the game you want to have as a group.

If you see folks excited for a dungeon game, and they’re mentioning anime/manga/books as their inspiration, it might be worth asking a few more questions about what they’re looking for before recommending any given game at all.

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Forbiddances and Forbidden Wishes

September 11, 2025

Devin White had a post on Bluesky, about how things being not chosen in RPGs has it’s own interesting aspect. (In the example, it was a spell having extremely annoying side effects. It also makes me think a bit about Momatoes’ ARC game where recharging spell uses often involves harsh costs like giving up a memory.)

Anyway, I thought about a premise I’ve had rattling in my head, probably 2 decades now, for a game where kids get kidnapped into the fae lands and forced to be knights to fight the monstrosities there.

While there, the kids do not age, and are immortal, unkillable, and can eventually heal all wounds. As long as they have not broken all three of these rules:

  • You must never kill anything that can speak
  • You must never lie in the Fae lands
  • You must never fall in love

Once you’ve broken all three, you’re mortal and very MUCH in danger.

I remember telling this idea to someone years ago and they said, “Is there anything that forces you to fall in love?”. “No”. “Then I’ll just never fall in love” and they felt that was all there was to it, missing the fact that the choice to never fall in love is kind of a big choice as a player for what kind of character you’re making and what kind of story you’re telling. It also seems funny to me that the issue of not killing creatures that speak already seemed foregone to them.

I think it’s a great thing to play with, in game design; the idea of forbiddances as well as things which have a high, brutally high cost, as long as it’s not the thing I’ve seen sometimes where a game will sell a central premise THEN make the premise unfun. (“You’re all sexy vampires. But vampires cannot enjoy sex.” Ok why are we playing sexy vampires then?).

The point of the high cost is to give players a narrative Chekov’s Gun. A chance to say something interesting and important when you choose to cross a line that should not be crossed or pay a price to do something.

Who is your character? What do they value? When does the scale tip past the point? It’s good fuel for charged stories. I just think part of it is making sure you it’s fun costs, not “why bother?” which is a different issue altogether.

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Apocalypse World & the missing Fiction to Clocks

September 10, 2025

(I swear I wrote a post about this before… but it’s not coming up on my searches so… here we are)

Over on a Discord, someone was talking about clock mechanics in games and how they’re generally unsatisfying. I agree; most games took the idea of “clocks” from Apocalypse World, or one of the PbtA descendants, but somewhere along the way, the load bearing bit about “fiction tied to clocks” got left behind.

The Example

It’s not just “succeed X number of steps” or “fail X number of steps”. That’s just “roll a bunch of times” without any meaningful push in the situation or events.

Here’s the example and explanation I wrote:

You write down the clock with a number of steps. There should be fictional points at each step. In AW, most of the clocks are generally negative situations, bc they’re GM tools to generate trouble. “Mako’s Gang Takes Over the Hold” might be one.

1 – People stop asking Leader Bassie to help, they go to Mako instead.
2 – Mako’s gang outnumbers every other gang 2 to 1 in the Hold
3 – The Foodhouse is protected only by Mako’s Guys
4- Bassie is absent during a crisis.

So, sometimes things will advance the clock (hard moves, failing to do anything long enough), but sometimes player actions or side effects of player actions causes things to advance as well.

Say one of the players drugs Bassie in order to rifle through her safe, and Bassie is left unconscious during an raid by the Owl Bikers. Oops you’ve pushed the clock all the way to 4 in one go. But this is also the logic you’d use for positive events as well if you chose to put a clock on it.

Additional Aspects

A couple of things also come of tying it to fiction – each step is an indication to the players something is happening.

Let’s take that example clock, and say the players cut it off 3 steps in (“We throw Mako into the radiation pit” “Geez” “Yeah make an example of them.”) you still have a lot of problems (people still want someone to do better than Bassie, Mako’s guys feel a way, some make a power move, oh crap they control the Foodhouse…). Likewise, if it was a positive clock and you fail the larger goal, you might have gotten some steps that earned meaningful gains you can still use.

And, along with that, the fiction of each step might change how you approach the clock as a whole. You can offset step 1 in the example by negotiation or leverage with folks. By step 3 you have to play very cagey if you want control of the Foodhouse back. Hell, you might be going without food for a while or cutting side deals with other folks you don’t like to stay supplied.

Now, these are basically back end – the players may know you’re using a clock mechanic but if they don’t know how many steps or what the fiction triggers are, they just know they should be doing generally what makes sense to solve problems or achieve goals. And, as the GM, your job is also to judge “close enough” or “I didn’t think of that but it should do X to the clock” when and where it makes sense.

Specific to Apocalypse World, is that the Threat Clocks tie into each other; one set of problems quite likely will accidentally trigger other clocks to advance. It’s a meta mechanic that builds into the “Moves Snowball” logic. But there’s no reason you couldn’t have clocks in a different game, impact both positive and negative in different ways. It’s a bit like “Help Organization A and Organization B, their allies, also likes you, but Organization C dislikes you”.

I wouldn’t try to go this complicated to start; just make them as you need them, and then if you realize one impacts the other, go with that.

Why do all this?

You can think of clocks as “bite sized prep”. In old, 90s style RPG plot prep, you’d prepare a branching path plotline of different things the players are likely to do, and it could add up to quite a bit of prep, after all, you’re almost designing a weekly “Choose your own adventure” set. Clocks are a slick way to put together small bits that might happen over several sessions, blast through in one session, or not at all, but you can probably jam one together in 5 minutes or less, which means it’s lower time cost and easier to modify, adapt, drop in, or throw away.

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