NIGHT OF THE HOGMEN

This is so great. Forgive the pun, but the rules lite approach gives you just enough mechanical crunch to get your teeth into and so when coupled with the sparse but evocative world building, the whole thing comes alive so quickly and easily. 

As one shots go, Hogmen makes me wonder why we even bother with laborious character creation processes for campaign play. I want a supplement of characters as hilariously written and mechanically expressive as 'Sir Shartle Pudget'. 

Our group has played a number of Forged in The Dark Games but not for a couple of years and this was the perfect return. Having bought the other two modules, I can't wait to run them and eagerly awaiting the full release. Fab. 

Just ran this tonight with me on GM and 4 players! A really easily prepped two hours of game, though I did get some sounds effects ready before which really added to the atmosphere, and because I let people choose characters in advance the player on Laconicus Strong could prep some appropriate awful poems to drop into dialogue when appropriate. 

Overall thoughts:

• It's a great introduction to some of the basics of the system; dice, effects, guts, and clocks. It's linear OVERALL so to get the most of the system I'd recommend keeping the encounters quite high level so they can really craft their own mayhem within them.
• Make sure the difference between Dice and Effect are clear, and be clear the verbs under each attribute are how they're used.
• I was too lenient with harm and guts spending, I absolutely should have been throwing more questions and tests at the players, tests on their worse stats (which alternatively forces them to push themselves burning their guts) and just generally more harm. I think the second part of the scenario can be stretched or shortened depending on how beaten up they are, but I think I would err on the side of desperation for a really cinematic climax.
• Great advice from a later module: get the players to name any NPC they meet as it makes the inevitable messy death feel more personal (RIP in peace, Timothy Oliphant). 
• A personal highlight: the player on Trode took to the game like a hog to mud, the ability for bonus effect by being disgusting lead to ever escalating displays of depravity (at one point he leaned in an started sucking an NPC's outstretched finger to assess his mental stability).

Blood Cottilion is next on the list, super excited for that!

Found out about this from Marsh mentioning it on the crate and crowbar ages back. Really enjoyed running this for a couple of friends as my first time DM-ing

What I liked:

• Each vignette, though concise in the text, provided enough meat for me to improvise some funny and frightening events
• The character playbooks and descriptions really enabled my players to get into a role. I other games where I've been a player beside them they haven't been nearly as expressive
• There's something delightfully theatrical about the situation and we couldn't help but all use expressive voices which isn't something I've ever done before

What didn't work so well (not necessarily the fault of the design):

• Since it's such a frantic situation I kept forgetting to set up position and effect before my players would role and it felt weird to backpedal so I usually just made something up that seemed appropriate
• We all didn't realise quite how many guts were available and quite how punishing Harm was and so we ended up in a situation where the characters had lots of guts left but couldn't use it to resist harm because they already had two minor wounds etc. One particular example of this was that one player goaded a slap out of an npc and then didn't try to resist because they thought it would be funny. They ended up regretting it!

Thanks a bunch for creating this! I'm looking forward to trying blood cotillion when I've got some more spare time and can't wait for stranger & stranger and TEETH!

I heard about this yesterday on the SU&SD podcast and printed it out the same day. Didn't have time to read the full rules or scenario before a few friends came over, so we just started with me quickly reviewing the rules, and reading the scenario as we played. It was super easy to run and get into and everyone had an awesome time. I love how short the whole package was and how I could read it as I ran it.

I've only played blades in the dark once (as GM) but I think that made it a bit easier to run. I'm super excited about the rest of the teeth system, but mostly to run more pre-prepared one shots like this. The pregen characters made it immediately evocative - from names to luggage to descriptions they really jumped off the page.

Eagerly planning running the 2nd one shot! 

I ran this with my Blades in the Dark group last weekend and everyone seemed to enjoy it! My favorite part of the game was when my players leaned into the provided player characters' backstories, personality, and occupations – despite being minimal, they're well designed so it created a lot of amusing interactions – and I loved how the Hysterias only emphasized this further.

As a first time GM five sessions into our Blades in the Dark campaign, it was a little jarring that the Night of the Hogmen encounters are provided linearly but I ran it that way and my players didn't seem to mind.

If I were to run it again, I'd make a few changes to how I presented the game. Our session didn't feel dangerous enough – I think I started most social encounters in "controlled" because the NPCs had no reason to escalate but I think it created tame encounters – I think I'd go with "risky" next time. I'd also make the danger feel more urgent – there was indecision that felt out-of-place in the setting. I'd also be more explicit that they needed to prepare for a siege – it wasn't apparent until a few encounters in when they saw the clock ticking. And finally, I didn't realize it when prepping but a few encounters fall into common horror tropes and my players were quick to realize and avoid the consequences. If I were to run it again, I'd try to be less obvious. That being said, even without this, we had a good time.

Thank you for putting this together at a name your own price – I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to future releases!

what are the special actions on the bottom right of character sheets? I dont see any explaination in the rules 

I had a chance to run this for some friends, some of whom hadn't played an RPG before; pretty much everything that could go wrong for the party did and everyone had a blast.

Will definitely but running it again (they only saw just over half of the game before the hogstorm got 'em) and very much looking forward to what's to come from TEETH. 

This is wonderfully put together and well-written! Time to start prefixing as many words as possible with 'hog' because it honestly seems to work for everything. 

I'm definitely tempted to run this for some new-to-RPGs friends too, it feels like the type of relatively simple but evocative concept that'd work really well.

I GMed this for our online RPG youth club and they loved it! Possibly one the best introductory adventures to the Blades system - such evocative writing and scenarios! Got that Sir, You are Being Hunted vibe ;-)

I now feel inspired to keep going on my Bridgeton Blades-hack... 

Idea looks pretty neat, do you have plans for translations? (Like, french?)