Tumgik
#Ttrpgs
Text
Two ongoing digital games bundles are offering more than 200 tabletop RPGs (among video games, soundtracks, books and other goodies) in order to raise money in support of the Palestine Children’s Relief Funds. The Palestinian Relief Bundle is being hosted on Itch.io, while the separate TTRPGs for Palestine Charity Bundle is taking place on Tiltify. For $8, the Palestinian Relief Bundle is offering nearly 400 total items, 103 of which are tabletop RPG systems, supplements and adventures. Mapmaking game Ex Novo is joined by the paranormal gunslinging satire FIST: Ultra Edition, along with Takuma Okada’s celebrated solo journaling game Alone on a Journey. Weird and dirty iconoclast game about money, the mind and everything else, Greed by Gormenghast is also on this list and is well worth a look. And if you’d rather keep it cosy and introspective, Cassi Mothwin’s Clean Spirit will get the whole group taking care of their domestic homes. The TTRPGs for Palestine Charity Bundle focuses solely on analogue games, providing nearly 200 tabletop games for $15. A full spreadsheet of the included titles can be viewed here and includes Nevyn Holme’s Gun&Slinger, where one player embodies an occult cowboy while the second plays their sentient, magical gun. Wendi Yu’s Here, There, Be Monsters! approaches monster hunting media from the other side of the camera with a decidedly queer lens and unapologetic politics. Makapatag’s Gubat Banwa is a lush and dynamic collision of wuxia media, fiercely romantic and tragic melodrama all set against the backdrop and folklore of The Philippines.
2K notes · View notes
christiansorrell · 3 days
Text
Tacticians of Ahm - Monthly Update #2!
Tumblr media
Full spread art by @helenacore depicting Early Graduation's opening field exercises!
Greetings Tacticians!
Tactician of Ahm's Monthly Update #2 is finally here! With it comes the early access version of the setting book, The Ahmian Almanac, which features its first sample region of Ahm, showcasing the style and structure of setting book I am hoping to create with the Almanac. The book will feature lore and locations, of course, but it will also feature more in-depth maps, new NPCs, unique equipment, a complete new Class, and more! I want to create a book that it as much a sourcebook chock full of new things for GMs to bring to the table as it is information about the world of Ahm and inspiration for adventures.
Tumblr media
Thanks you so much for the continued support of and engagement with the game! I used more of the raised funds to commission more art from Helena Santana including a new, full-spread art piece for Early Graduation (at the top of the post) and a piece of Dekkin Von Lopesbane character art (also for Early Graduation). Plus, I've worked with Jean Verne on a second preview spread (see above) of our planned look and feel for the game's final layout, this time utilizing some of Helena's awesome art from Monthly Update #1!
Because of my delay of this update (it was originally slated for last month) and the update overall being smaller than I originally was hoping, I am delaying this month's price hike on the game so if you enjoy Tacticians of Ahm now is still a great time to get on board! Tell your friends to do the same! Next update, the price will rise by $5 USD and that will continue apace (barring unforeseen delays like the one I suffered this last month, of course).
Lastly, I recently ran the opening two hours of Early Graduation over on The Weekly Scroll. Check it out if you'd like to see the game in action and see how I run it as the GM!
youtube
PATCH NOTES - v0.8.3
Tactician’s Textbook
Clarified Conditions to apply until the end of target’s next Turn (as opposed to confusing wording regarding Rounds).
Renamed “Shield” Condition to “Ward” to avoid having the same name as a shield, the piece of equipment and updated relevant uses throughout the text.
Ward condition now explicitly blocks all damage AND any/all Conditions while in effect.
Updated Mage Ability - Barrier to include “May be cast on self (1 target maximum per use)”
Added clarifying text to Shields in Equipment section: “(does not block Conditions)”
Added clarifying text regarding applying multiple Conditions to a single target: “A target may suffer one or more different Conditions at the same time. If a target currently has a Condition, they may not be affected by that same Condition again (nor does it add turns of effect to the current Condition) until the current instance has ended.”
Gamemaster’s Guidebook
Added Boar (EL1) to Bestiary
EARLY GRADUATION
Added a massive new piece of art from Helena Santana to the title page, depicting the Tacticians sparring with Imperial Army soldiers during the Field Day exercises!
Added Boar (EL1) to “BATTLE: Wolves in the Woods” and adjusted combatant numbers at various party sizes to more accurately reflect typical intended difficulty.
AHMIAN ALMANAC (NEW!)
Lake Traecine region added, includes the following:
5 Major Points of Interest: New locations for your Tacticians to travel to and explore!
20 Calls for Aid: Adventure hooks and strange happenings across the region!
1 Class: New classes, accessible only to Tacticians who prove their worth!
11 Abilities: New combat skills, taught to those favored by a certain faction!
2 Enemies: New combatants, unique to the specific region or faction!
2 Relics: New guarded/lost pieces of equipment, be they mundane, magical, or corrupt3d!
2 Factions: New groups, wielding political, cultural, or magical power!
1 Shop: A New specialty establishment carrying new and rare items!
4 Characters: New NPCs for your Tacticians to meet, interact with, and fight alongside!
More detailed (placeholder) map of the region with travel paths!
28 notes · View notes
anim-ttrpgs · 3 days
Text
Tumblr media
Promotional art by team artist @chaospyromancy
Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is a neo-noir investigation-focused RPG with (as you can probably guess from the title) a supernatural twist. Eureka fills several voids we have noticed in the TTRPG space. Eureka supports investigation to a degree we haven’t seen before, ensuring that searching for clues is a granular and player-driven process, but also ensuring that the whole story doesn’t grind to a halt after one single failed investigation check.
Though most PCs will be mundane humans—or perhaps because most PCs will be mundane humans—Eureka also supports playing monstrous PCs, such as a vampire, in a way we have never seen before. This isn’t just a watered-down stat bonus, it’s like playing an almost entirely different game, with all the monster’s strengths and weaknesses to account for while solving the mystery, plus the added incentive to keep it a secret from the other PCs as well as their players.
If you like or are interested in Call of Cthulhu, Monster of the Week, Dresden Files, X-Files, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Apocalypse Keys, or Gumshoe, you’ll probably find something in Eureka to really enjoy.
Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is kickstarting from right now until May 10th! Back it while you still can!
youtube
Tumblr media Tumblr media
If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!
If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!
You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!
Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!
We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.
23 notes · View notes
vforvalensa · 5 months
Text
Tumblr media
90s indie ttrpgs whip ass
15K notes · View notes
quinnydoll · 7 months
Text
being a GM is really fun because sometimes you can make your players go through some really traumatic Evangelion bullshit, but other times you can force them to go bowling for no reason
16K notes · View notes
saja-star · 1 year
Text
I am obsessed with this idea
36K notes · View notes
eternalgirlscout · 10 months
Text
the ideal GM/player dynamic is when one side says "here are some problems i caused" and the other says "thank you so much! i will make these worse" back and forth forever
15K notes · View notes
rathayibacter · 9 days
Text
guess who made a wargame with thirteen thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine unit statblocks
4K notes · View notes
cryoverkiltmilk · 1 year
Text
Two vital lessons from Brennan Lee Mulligan
Tabletop roleplaying games can immeasurably enrich your life.
There is no hill too small to die on.
17K notes · View notes
Text
Reason why you should play solo games :
You can play without having to find a day when all the group can be here.
2K notes · View notes
aurpiment · 8 months
Text
I had a dream I was playing a TTRPG with a group of friends of a person i sort of knew, who all knew each other but who I didn’t know, and there was a complex mechanic for tracking your character’s emotional state which I will draw for you because it was insane. I don’t know what the game was about. They kept saying “it’s not hard, you’ll pick it up so quick.”
Tumblr media
I have no idea how it worked, only how it looked
The other players insisted it would make sense in a few rounds
I don’t know what oonduh and eönduh meant. I think eo means horse in a tolkien language but this game was more sf-alien-politicking-themed than fantasy-themed
This was a card game with events and points
I don’t recall what character trait/ emotion i had chosen for my upper righthand quadrant. You could choose what to put in each quadrant
I wound up with two pegs in the Succumb zone for anger and asked “is that bad?” And the GM said “not necessarily” and that i could “flip it for a character choice” since she (my character) was 15
“Flipping succumb pegs” visually meant exchanging two red pegs for a slightly larger red lentil-shaped disc, and in gameplay meant… i have no idea what it meant.
I was having a wretched and confusing time at the table
4K notes · View notes
Text
hello website that likes fucked up houses. did you know that i wrote a gmless tabletop game based on house of leaves where you can create your very own fucked up house
it's called house. yes literally. the main mechanic is that you draw a map of a fucked up, sprawling, potentially never-ending house that grows as you explore it in-game. you draw from a deck of regular playing cards to determine the vibe of each room in the house. you might never escape! that's up to you. i'm not your mom
you can get it here and there's a 50% chance you already own it if you bought one of the big itch bundles during early pandemic. enjoy
4K notes · View notes
ursamajori · 1 year
Text
hey so we put your boyfriend in a tabletop campaign and now he has a martyr complex. yeah he got protective to the point of being self sacrificial due to his lack of self worth. we gave him a found family so he had something to live for but instead he’s just committed to being a human shield to keep them safe even if it kills him. sorry
13K notes · View notes
vexwerewolf · 1 year
Text
The thing is, D&D is not a game.
I know that sounds insane, but hear me out: D&D is not a game, it is a games console. You don't actually "play D&D." You play "Dragon Heist" or "Tomb of Annihilation" or "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" or "your GM's homebrew campaign" or "the plot of Critical Role Season 1 reconstructed from memory" on D&D.
For quite a long while now - possibly literal decades - D&D hasn't even been the best games console, but it's been "the one everyone knows about" and "the one my friends have" and in fact it's "the one whose name is almost synonymous with the entire medium of TTRPGs," like how "Nintendo" or "Playstation" could just mean "games console" to people who didn't understand games consoles. They might not have heard of a "tabletop roleplaying game," but most people have heard of "Dungeons & Dragons."
For this extended metaphor, D&D is Nintendo back in the 90s, or Playstation in the 2000s. Sometimes you say "oh let's go to my house and play Nintendo" or "c'mon dude I wanna play Playstation" but you're not actually playing Nintendo or Playstation, you're playing Resident Evil or Super Mario Bros or Jurassic Park or Metal Gear Solid or whatever on a Nintendo or a Playstation.
Now, this metaphor is going to get even more tortured, but remember how when the PS2 and the original X-Box came out, they used a standardised DVD format, but the Nintendo console in that generation, the Gamecube, used discs but they were this proprietary tiny little disc format that they had control over? That essentially meant that it was really difficult to make third party titles for the Gamecube that did literally anything that Nintendo didn't want them to do, and also essentially gave Nintendo an even greater ability to skim money off the top of any sales?
So that must've seemed like a smart business decision in their heads. But the PS2 and the X-Box used DVDs. This was a standardized format which gave Microsoft and Sony way less control over who made games for their consoles, but that actually turned out to be a good thing for gaming, because it meant that the breadth of games that you could play on their consoles was massively increased even if some of them were games Microsoft and Sony didn't really approve of. (Also it's worth nothing that the PS2 and the X-Box could just play DVDs, which meant if your household was on a budget, you didn't need a separate DVD player - your games console could do it for you! This was actually a huge selling point!)
What Wizards are currently trying to do now is kinda-sorta the equivalent of Sony suddenly announcing that the PS5 will only accept a proprietary cartridge format they hold the patent on, will control the content of and charge money for the construction of. This possibly seems like it could be a moneymaker in your head because you hold market dominance (apparently the PS5 has 30 million units shipped compared to X-Box Series X 20 million units) and so many people make games for your console, but what it actually means is game devs and publishers will abandon your product. If it takes so much more work, the scope of what they're allowed to do is so much more limited and they're going to make less money off of it, they just won't bother. They'll go make games for the X-Box or PC instead.
To use another computer metaphor, D&D is Windows - it might not be the best system but it's the system most people are familiar with and so it gets the most stuff made for it, but there's is an upper limit on the bullshit people will take before they decide fuck it and get an Apple or learn how Linux works.
TTRPG systems are a weird product because you're not selling people a game, you're selling people a method to play a game. All the actual games are created by the community - even prewritten campaigns needs to be executed via a game master. Trying to skim money off the community will mean they'll eventually give up on you.
11K notes · View notes
sprintingowl · 1 year
Text
This Discord Has Ghosts In It
It doesn't get talked about enough, but This Discord Has Ghosts In It is a rad example of how you can adapt game design to your surroundings.
Basically, This Discord Has Ghosts In It is a digital larp. It's Phasmophobia played by chat. Your group creates a discord server to function as a haunted house, then you all explore it, building new 'rooms' out of channels as you go.
Some players take the roles of ghosts, and are muted but can affect the environment in the haunted house.
Other players take the roles of explorers, and can talk, but the ghosts are all listening.
Discord wasn't built to be gamified this way, but that doesn't matter.
As long as you can guarantee consistent behavior from a thing, you can build mechanics off of it.
Anything in your environment can be turned into a game.
And in this particular case, it's a really good one!
The mechanics lend themselves well to the kinds of pacing, limited communication, and untrustworthy setting that any good ghost story needs.
9K notes · View notes
public-trans-it · 8 months
Text
A lot of people talk about Actual Play podcasts giving unrealistic expectations for TTRPGs (Surprise! Trained Actors improv differently from your average player, and even for indie APs, playing for an audience is completely different from playing among friends)
But I absolutely think that watching other people play CAN inspire new ways to play, in a way you can’t really get elsewhere.
It wasn’t until I listened to Friends at the Table and listened to how Austin Walker narrates the games they play that I considered the potential of treating a TTRPG less like the kind of collaborative improv we normally treat it as, and more like storyboarding.
The major difference being: Austin regularly talks about ‘the camera’. It is practically its own character with how much attention it gets.
“So I’m imagining this like one of those shots where everything kinda freezes in place, and the character is still moving to show the out of body experience they are having right now, and when the scene cuts back, these are the parts that are different.”
“Oh yeah, you open the box, and it’s like that scene in Pulp Fiction. Where we just see this golden glow from what’s coming inside. Your characters know what’s in there now, but I have no idea, we haven’t gotten to that point yet. We will come back to it.”
“Okay you see this symbol, and your character wasn’t there for it so they don’t know what it was, but we the audience can immediately connect it back to this one cult we were dealing with.”
At one point just blatantly goes “Oh man, actually should we change it to this, for a better thematic parallel to what happened in that other session? That might be a really good resolution for your character.”
It’s such an INCREDIBLE example of what you can do by treating the fiction so casually, and like the work in progress it actually is. Genuinely one of the best GM practices I have ever seen, and something that very quickly became a tool I make heavy use of in my campaigns.
The story isn’t a finished product, and it turns out treating it like a draft instead of a finished product makes the game able to do SO MUCH more cool shit.
2K notes · View notes