Cannibal Halfling GamingJan 29

System Hack: Colony Sim Cortex Lists part 1

It’s time to move from theory to practice. As we move on to the next stage of this System Hack, I’m going to start taking the elements we discussed in the first set of articles and make them into actual game elements. For today, that means character creation. When we discussed characters for this System Hack, we landed on some pretty straightforward prime sets: Attributes, Skills, and Distinctions. As such, we’re going to lock in our Attributes and Skills. For Distinctions, the number I’d want to write is perhaps a bit high to cover comprehensively in one article, but I am going to lock in what the three Distinctions each character has are, what they do mechanically, and how they’ll be roughly categorized. […]

https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2026/01/29/system-hack-colony-sim-cortex-lists-part-1/

<smitty />Jan 4

After delaying it in every way I could, I think it’s finally time to run a proper superheroes game for my Thursday night group (Sentinels RPG, naturally). This means I must now embark on what is for me a rather difficult task: coming up with a superheroes setting that makes any god damn sense.

#ttrpg #cortexprime #superheroes

Miriam's on Medical LeaveJan 2

Chers joueurs, voici une petite annonce pour une mise à jour importante : Torchlite est désormais disponible en français !

Tristan Geyer s'est attelé à ce projet de traduction colossal afin de permettre aux joueurs francophones de profiter du jeu. Il a eu la gentillesse de partager sa traduction pour que tous les francophones puissent y jouer.

https://xineink.itch.io/torchlite/devlog/1285686/torchlite-en-francais

#TorchLite #JeuDeRole #JDR #CortexRPG #CortexPrime #FantasyRPG #RPG #TTRPG

Torchlite en Francais! - TorchLite • Epic Fantasy Adventures & Lightweight Rules by Xine

Chers joueurs, voici une petite annonce pour une mise à jour importante : Torchlite est désormais disponible en français ! Tristan Geyer s'est attelé à ce projet de traduction colossal afin de pe...

itch.io
Cannibal Halfling GamingDec 18

System Hack: Colony Sim Cortex Overworld

While the focus in RimWorld is on the stretch of land that you’ve claimed for your base, the entire planet is available to you to explore. You can see the spread of different biomes and factions when you select your landing site at the beginning of the game, but really exploring and interacting with the broader world is dependent on either sending out risky caravans or developing later-game technologies like drop pods and (now with Odyssey) gravships. For our System Hack, the base site is likely to feel a bit smaller, and venturing out onto the world map is something that happens sooner. Luckily, we have decades of wilderness exploration in TTRPGs to help us out. When looking at our overworld map, we want to make sure that exploration and venturing beyond the base site both provides interesting decisions and helps us populate a world with people and places that our players will want to explore. The overworld is also where we start considering some of the setting assumptions of RimWorld, and deciding where we converge or diverge. RimWorld’s implied setting is fascinating, but the place where all of the setting ideas fail to emulsify is in the overworld. Beyond the dispersion of settlements being a clear game contrivance, the lack of any population buildup or agglomeration is just not how any planet would look after years of colonization. There is a line to be walked here; a ‘RimWorld’ would likely self-select for individualists who may want space and to be left alone, but there’s simply too many personal and economic benefits for larger settlement to assume there wouldn’t be any. […]

https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2025/12/18/system-hack-colony-sim-cortex-overworld/

Cannibal Halfling GamingDec 11

The Endie Awards 2025 – Aaron Edition

This post is brought to you thanks to Lady Tabletop, who prompted folks to write about their own gaming experiences of the year and give out their own fun awards. Like Seamus I thought this was a neat idea, and was also glad (and relieved) that ‘The Endies’ weren’t trying to be yet another award given out because someone disagrees with the ENnies. Thinking back on the year and giving your own awards is more useful (and more fun!), anyway. I had a much more constrained gaming year than Seamus in part because I had a very busy year; in the middle of this year my partner and I moved, which involved buying a condo, selling two condos, moving one person once and another person (and a cat) twice. In a way I’m surprised I got as much gaming in as I did, and also surprised I was able to write anything from May to August. Still, the difference in absolute number hides the point that Seamus made to me that, due to the number of campaigns I’m in and how often I run, I probably ran and played more sessions by absolute count than Seamus did. […]

https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2025/12/11/the-endie-awards-2025-aaron-edition/

Cannibal Halfling GamingNov 20

System Hack: Colony Sim Cortex Base Building

If any one topic is ‘the core’ of this System Hack, this would be it. Base building is the underlying gameplay loop of RimWorld and it is also a topic du jour in RPG circles, with the (admittedly poorly detailed) stronghold building from the D&D days of yore coming back into focus as more gamers want broader storyline opportunities. For our purposes, of course, if we’re making a colony sim we need to make a colony. But what exactly is the best way to do that? Base building from my perspective is sandwiched between two examples which effectively bracket the space we have to work in. On the heavy end is RimWorld itself, a computer-assisted colony manager where everything is measured out in five foot squares and the player has complete power to place elements as they want them, as long as everything fits. On the light end is the new generation of stronghold building rules, most effectively typified by Free League’s games, notably Forbidden Lands and Twilight:2000. These games add a strong layer atop their roleplay frameworks, but the actual mechanical existence of a Forbidden Lands stronghold is merely a list of buildings with requirements and effects. We know the first item is too much, but we know the second is not enough. So what will base building in our System Hack actually look like? […]

https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2025/11/20/system-hack-colony-sim-cortex-base-building/

Cannibal Halfling GamingOct 24

System Hack: Colony Sim Cortex Tasks and Work

When you boil it all the way down, RimWorld is a game where you assign tasks to your colonists and optimize how they get performed. Every time you place down blueprints, place a zone, or add a ‘bill’ to a production structure, you’re effectively communicating a specific task. When it comes to our tabletop colony sim, these sorts of tasks are going to be a cornerstone of the gameplay loop just like how they are in RimWorld. The actual implementation, though, is going to be quite different. Structured time in RPGs is seen as something to be avoided, at least outside of combat. In most trad games, the passage of time is something either tracked closely in increments no more than a few seconds, or glossed over entirely. We have started to see games, especially games using Free League’s YZE system, paying more attention to the passage of time, while Edge’s new DPS mechanics used in Arkham Horror are assigning a mechanical bounding to the typically loose definition of a ‘scene’ by anchoring characters with a dice pool that exhausts over the span of one scene. It’s useful to consider rules like these for our game, but a Colony Sim is going to require something different. With productive tasks being primary, constant and consistent time tracking is going to be needed to fairly assess what’s going on in the colony. […]

https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2025/10/24/system-hack-colony-sim-cortex-tasks-and-work/

Cannibal Halfling GamingSep 18

System Hack: Colony Sim Cortex Characters

Characters are the key unit of play in any RPG, and our system hack is going to be no different. For a game modeled after RimWorld, though, we’re going to have to strike a balance between emulation and ease of use, especially considering how many characters may be at play. Cortex Prime allows for a range of different options for modeling characters, collectively called Prime Sets. Different combinations of Prime Sets lend themselves to different genres, and each one has different rules mods that can be attached to it. Only one Prime Set is required, Distinctions, but luckily it works well for certain traits within the RimWorld framework. After some consideration, the two core Prime Sets we’re going to use outside of Distinctions are basic ones, Attributes and Skills. Attributes may not be directly used in RimWorld, but giving each character a rating in Physical, Mental, and Social can also be used for stress tracks, recreation type preferences, and other underlying RimWorld properties that wouldn’t fit with other Prime Sets. We’re also going to look into Resources and Relationships, Prime Sets that will be important for the game but perhaps limited at character creation. […]

https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2025/09/18/system-hack-colony-sim-cortex-characters/

Cannibal Halfling GamingAug 14, 2025

System Hack: Colony Sim Cortex Foundation

Let me tell you, I’ve been playing a lot of RimWorld over the last month. The new Odyssey DLC adds a whole dimension to the game that was previously fairly difficult to access: Exploration. With a gravship, it’s possible to go to so many more places on the map, and thankfully they added more things to see on that map as well. Odyssey adds to and enhances the gameplay loop of RimWorld, but thanks to the gravship’s function as a mobile base, that gameplay loop is largely maintained even with the changes.

Thinking about how the gameplay changes and doesn’t change with the addition of the gravship proved to be a good way to start thinking about the gameplay loop of this System Hack. When I’m playing RimWorld, what are elements I want more of that the game isn’t really going to provide? What pieces of the game, on the other hand, are best left to a computer? The trouble with developing an approach to a colony sim RPG is that the genre and its best examples are fairly broad, and you need to make some narrowing decisions very early on.

As I said earlier when discussing my design goals, I’m not trying to emulate RimWorld. Rather, the goal of the game is to provide a similar conceit that leads to storytelling. We are going to be using a few setting concepts from RimWorld to ground the setting of the game, and we are going to be focusing at least notionally on the idea of a colony, a homestead of a handful of people who are trying to make their way on a new world. There are going to be things we want to lean into, like relationships, that can be given significantly more depth at a game table than on a computer. There will be others, like tile-by-tile building layout, that are probably best left on the PC. Ultimately the three elements we want to build from are going to be creating characters, building the settlement, and exploring the world.

[…]

https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2025/08/14/system-hack-colony-sim-cortex-foundation/

Miriam's on Medical LeaveJun 12, 2025

I've been complaining about this map for months, but now that it's done, I can share with you the rather impressive (if I do say so myself) timelapse of the illustration process. I'm really rather proud of how this one came out!

(the video's too big for anyplace but YouTube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwp1AMKGvxs

(Reshares vastly appreciated, btw!)

#fantasyArt #fantasy #ttrpg #ttrpgs #WickedWhiskers #KeystoneFantasyRoleplaying #Cortex #CortexPrime #dwarves #cartography #map #illustration

Khaz Ankhor Mapping Timelapse

YouTube