Enter the Robotic Topologist

Announcement time!

I'm rebranding.

Shocking, I know. I had originally wanted to just release everything I made under my own name, but I've realized that that's not the best idea. For starters, I have a pretty generic name. More relevant is the fact that any collaboration just shouldn't be released under my name. I want to share things I think are cool, and don't want to imply that someone else's creative work is totally mine, especially as I reach out to artists and get help on things like layout and promotion.

With that said, welcome to Surface Level, the Robotic Topologist Blog. Previously Wodan Gaming by Daniel Harris.

Robotic Topologist is my new name to put on any and all gaming content I'm going to release. I think it's a pretty good name, especially the topologist part. I'm fascinated by the study of topology and like the implication of table-top-ology. The robot part is there since I'll mostly be focusing on sci-fi stuff, but robots come up in my other genre interest of weird fantasy. Also, I just think it sounds good and is less stuck up than Wodan, which I was considering before.

Surface Level Games is this blog. You'll have to update your bookmark url to match I'm afraid.

It's been a long time coming, and I soft launched the new name with my itch and a new twitter. Links are as follows:

Or just follow my linktree.

I'm planning on releasing a bunch of new stuff this year, and if you've been paying attention, you've probably already seen some of it. Stay tuned on to this blog for lots of big exciting announcements (and more content too).

- Dan

Comments

A Quick Method of Character Linking

I do not like cold starts. Opening in a tavern or what else kills the believability for me. It also lacks any hook for why the party should be working together instead of apart. To alleviate this I exclusively have some sort of starting condition. Most recently a caravan of refugees traveling across expansive, empty steppes. This is better than starting out nowhere but I still think there should be some glue to bind the party before they set out on adventure. To accomplish this, I've devised a method of quickly "linking" characters together, and then actually putting that to good use by making the players actually think. So here is my session zero character linking rules: Every character will roll a die. Which die is dependent on how many players you have and what the starting conditions are. A a larger die (such as a d10) will result in less relationships, while a smaller die (such as a d4) will result in many more relationships. A d8 tends to work well. In small groups,

New Release: WASTExWORLD

I made something new! It's called "WASTExWORLD". It's a sci-fi micro setting for running games on a trash planet. It's system agnostic and pretty straightforward. I'm really happy with how it turned out. Go get it right away from itch.io . WASTExWORLD by Daniel Harris

2 Years of Drier Deserts, Hotter Suns

Two years ago today I released the first public version of Drier Deserts, Hotter Suns. Immediately after that, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Vancouver, where I was living at the time. As I had been working on the project on and off for about eight years at that point (making 2022 now year ten!), it was awful timing. It really killed my motivation to work on games. A bit of playtesting has happened, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. You see, I came to learn very early on during those days that I absolutely hated running games online. As a referee, I am very active . I love to stand up, walk around the table, make big gestures etc. That really doesn't work online. It was also hard gauging people's reactions to the new awesome rules I had just written. These might sound like excuses but there's no denying the fact that I was having a whole lot less fun playing RPGs and making them. It really hurt the project and my playtesting efforts. It's not all bad though! The playtes

Surface Level

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