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Court of Blades is a tabletop RPG that takes place in a fantasy renaissance city-state populated by scheming nobles, court magicians, and dashing duelists.
Explore how players manage intrigues, scandals, reputations, connections and more in my flip through!
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Some thoughts about TTRPGs, and the ubiquity of DnD.
As someone who does not *love* DnD… it is still the only game I’ve tried with that particular vibe. And I don’t mean “medieval fantasy”.
I mean, an achievement fantasy underscored by mechanics built around an individual success-and-improvement narrative, with a large social component. (You win as a team, but you improve and grow as individual characters.)
This is mechanical, independent of what your DM may or may not put in the game.
Let me list it out.
DnD has no standard mechanics for detriments.
As much as there are possibilities for certain monsters and afflictions to permanently harm or alter a character against the player’s will, a DM has to actively choose to put those in their game, and even then there are typically ways to heal or fix them. In a typical game, there are no permanent, mechanically enforced negatives for your dude; no lingering injuries, no madness, no disabilities, etc.
Recovery mechanics are also simple and accessible (looking at you, Long Rest) and resources are not really set up to be scarce and/or a slog to track and ration.
(Mind you: I’m talking about mechanics that impose a permanent debuff or handicap on your character against your will as a feature of the game, not about playing a disabled character as your own choice.)
Simple, straightforward ability growth as a central mechanic.
DnD is almost entirely designed around characters becoming cooler and stronger over time. This ability growth is straightforward: no complicated skill tree system where you can get screwed over by your own suboptimal choices.
There is also no standard mechanic to lose abilities you’ve gained, nor is your degree of improvement every level left to chance. (The closest DnD comes to a chance mechanic in this area is rolling for HP, and even that’ll let you take average if you roll below). The game is set up to reward your character with ability growth just for continuing to play it.
Success narrative dominates.
The primary completion path in all DnD modules is “the characters win the day”. That’s what the game is about. And as much as some modules may try to subvert that with little bits of flavour text here and there, they’re doing so for show. The very manner a DM has to set up sessions is all about making the challenges appropriately levelled for the players to overcome. If you’re playing, you’re *supposed* to overcome the challenge. A game where everyone dies is not considered expected or desirable. And while a creative DM may occasionally set up an encounter the characters are expected to flee from… if it’s not telegraphed properly, the odds are they WILL die. Because the game is not set up for players to expect unbeatable challenges.
Significant character agency where it matters.
Agency is about more than just being able to make choices in-game. In DnD, you have the ability to make choices that feel situationally impactful. You’ll rarely have a situation where you consistently do everything “right”, roll well, and yet the enemy is entirely unaffected. Your abilities aren’t vague in power level or usefulness -even if you aren’t a particularly creative player, the stuff that’s on your character sheet that you can do is going to be at least moderately useful in most situations a typical game throws at you, even if applied with little finesse.
…
Like I said, I don’t *love* DnD. I’m not super sold on medieval fantasy to begin with, I’m pretty bad at basic number math (I have dyscalculia so this shit is hard for me), and I like supporting indie and less popular titles on principle.
But holy shit.
Can somebody tell TTRPG designers to please make a game that just lets me be cool and win at something?
I want to play a badass vampire! But in Vampire: The Masquerade, that’s kinda… Not Great. I want to be a faux-Victorian era paranormal investigator! But, ehm, Call of Cthulhu? Having my character die or go insane kinda sucks. I like scifi! But everything from Cyberpunk RED to the various iterations of Warhammer 40k RPG is bleak as fuck.
Mörk Borg? Dark and bleak. Candela Obscura? Dark and bleak. The Laundry? Dark and bleak.
(I’m not counting Pathfinder, as it’s basically just DnD with more math and a less straightforward character builder.)
I know I’m only scratching the very top surface of less ubiquitous TTRPGs here, but still. All these relatively well known and oft recommended titles completely fail to capture what makes DnD appealing to me -and I suspect, to many others.
In TTRPG spaces I often see people ask “Why modify and reskin DnD to be (insert aesthetic) if you can play (game designed in that aesthetic)?” And my answer is always the same. Because I want to have the DnD-style success experience, only with (cool aesthetic thing).
I want to play other games! I’m not hung up on medieval fantasy or the d20 system or spell slots or anything! I just… don’t want to play some bottom-feeding cannon fodder character in a Misery Simulator, engage with complex ethics as a game mechanic, run a one-person accountancy department to keep track of tons of scarce resources, have the other players as my de-facto opponents, be faced with challenges my character can’t do anything to overcome, invest hours into building a dude who gets offed in the first encounter, put my time in a game that progressively stacks detriments onto my character to shrink their success chances while the stakes keeps growing, etcetera etcetera.
Just, none of that edgy shit. Life’s plenty edgy already, I just want some easy escapism.
Anyway.
If anyone has recommendations for a TTRPG that sort of matches my list of requirements… I’m all ears. I like most stuff aesthetically tho I’m not super into either pirates or contemporary military as a theme. I also prefer games that don’t employ a gimmick (like jenga blocks, an hourglass, burning candles, etc).
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Also finished the color version of page 1 for the Street Wolves character sheets today. I'm literally exhausted. My fingers and wrist hurts.
Tomorrow I have one last page to do the color treatment to, then I gotta put in the form fillable pdf form and I can call this part of the project done!
#Street Wolves#SWADE#indie rpg design#indie roleplay#indie ttrpg design#ttrpg design#Savage Worlds#Synthwave#Outrun#rpg#role playing games#tabletop role playing games#graphic design
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November 2023 TTRPG Crowdfunding Retrospective
I recently became curious about the state of TTRPG crowdfunding (full transparency, it's partially because I am gearing up for a ZineMonth 2024 project *shameless plug*). How much money is actually being made? Who's making it? What are they making? And how many people are backing?
I know that this information is tracked for ZiMo by a variety of people (scroll down for the credits), but what about the rest of the year? What about bigger projects?
Essentially: what about the real money being made?
Well here's the quick stats:
175 campaigns
10 Backerkit
1 Crowdfundr
164 Kickstarter
$10,275,932.48 raised
$1,256,857.98 on Backerkit
$455.00 on Crowdfundr
$9,018,619.50 on Kickstarter
Types of campaigns
7 accessories
2 Actual Play shows
41 adventures
2 advice books
8 campaign settings
1 magazine
58 supplements/expansions
56 systems
39 distinct systems used across all campaigns
66 campaigns (37.71%) used D&D 5e and raised $5,621,468.60 (54.71% of all money raised in November)
43 campaigns (24.57%) developed original systems and raised $751,587.43 (7.31% of all money raised in November)
To read the rest, check out my latest blog post (yes, on a different blog lol) or look at the raw data here.
#ttrpg#ttrpg stuff#indie ttrpg#tabletop role playing games#tabletop roleplaying#crowdfunding#ttrpg economics#kickstarter#crowdfundr#backerkit#platform economy
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my fellow d&d players, reblog this and put your adventuring parties name in the tags. i wanna see all the creative party names. 🥹
#The Tall-Tales#d&d#d&d 5th edition#d&d 5e#dnd#dnd5e#dnd 5e#dungeons and dragons#dungeons and dragons player#dnd player#d&d player#ttrpg#tabletop#tabletop gaming#tabletop role playing games#tabletop role playing game#adventuring party#adventure group#what do you call yourselves#how do you want to do this#you can certainly try#nerds
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ttrpg baddies, how do we feel about the Open Legend system
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Top 5 Tabletop RPG's to Play in 2023
Here are my top 5 TTRPG's to play in 2023!
A TTRPG lover can never have enough dice!
Hey everyone, Slick Dungeon, here and I wanted to talk about the top 5 roleplaying games I think you should play this year. Just a note, this list is designed for people who have some experience with role playing games so if you are a new player or game master there’s a chance these games may not be for you. For those players I recommend checking out my…
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#Cyberpunk#Kids on Brooms#Mutants and Masterminds#Tabletop Role Playing Games#Thirsty Sword Lesbians#Top 5 list#TTRPG#Zweihander
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NaNoWriMo with a TTRPG Twist: Day 17
This is terrifically delayed, and a departure from plot hooks because I’m in need of a palate cleanser. I’m also not as present in the TTRPG spaces as I have been previously and so I’m playing a little catch up on some of the discourse (which should shock no one).
Let’s all keep in mind these are my views and opinions on the topic(s) that follow and that they are by no means the be-all, end-all.…
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#adventures#amwriting#D&D#D&D 5E#DND#Dungeons & Dragons#Dungeons and Dragons#fiction#misadventures#modules#NaNoWriMo#tabletop role playing games#TTRPG#Wild Beyond the Witchlight#Witchlight#writing
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My entry into tabletop role playing games...
…was pretty rough.
When I was growing up, Dungeons & Dragons and its players were looked down on for being “too nerdy” or in worst faces, it was seeing as a gateway to some hellish underworld (See the “Satanic panic”). I was heavy discouraged from participating in the game but I was also looked down for getting into computer-based role playing games like the Diablo series. Geekdom in the late…
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Look what arrived from Dicebreaker! Genuinely so honored and thankful for the recognition of "Rising Star Designer." It's been really tough to refer to myself as a game designer, but I'm finally feeling less like a pretender every day!
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Help Save the World of TTRPGs and Their Creators.
Okay I’m being a little dramatic, but at the same time I’m pretty serious. This is a call to action, and the livelihoods of myself and lots of other people, many of them (like myself) disabled, are depending on it. This is a post about why, what you can do about it, and (perhaps least often answered) how.
This post is actually an accompaniment to another discussion by someone else. If you don’t want to listen to a 90-minute in-depth discussion of much of what I’m about to tell you, you can just keep reading. Otherwise, click here or here and listen to this either before or after you read this post. (They’re the same thing, just different sources.)
If you have ever made or reblogged posts urging people to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox, you should be willing to at least give a try to other TTRPGs besides D&D5e for much the same principle reasons. I’m not telling you you have to hate D&D5e, and I’m not telling you you have to quit D&D5e, I’m just asking you to try some other games. If you don’t like them, and you really want to go back to D&D5e, then go back to D&D5e. But how can you really know you won’t like other games if you have literally never tried them? This post is a post about why and how to try them. If you’re thinking right now that you don’t want to try them, I urge you to look below to see if any of your reasons for not wanting to try them are covered there. Because the monopoly that WotC’s D&D5e has on TTRPGs as a whole is bad for me as a game designer, and it’s bad for you as a game player. It’s even bad for you if you like D&D5e. A fuller discussion of the why and how this is the case can be found in the links above, but it isn’t fully necessary for understanding this post, it’ll just give you a better perspective on it.
If you’re a D&D5e player, I’m sure at some point or another, you’ve been told “play a different game”, and it must get frustrating without the context of why and how. This post is here to give you the why and how.
[The following paragraph has been edited because the original wording made it sound like we think all weird TTRPGs suck.]
Before that though, one more thing to get out of the way. I'm going to level with you. There’s a lot of weird games out there.
You are gonna see a lot of weird TTRPGs when you take the plunge. Many of them try to completely reinvent what a TTRPG even is, and some fail spectacularly, others really do even up doing something very interesting even if they don't end up being what a core TTRPG player wants. But not every indie RPG is a Bladefish, lots and lots of them are more 'traditional' and will feel very familiar to you, I promise. (And you might even find that you like the weird experimental bladefish type ones, these are usually ideal for one-session plays when your usual group can't play your usual game for any reason.)
You're also going to probably see a lot of very bad games, and man have I got some stories of very bad games, but for now I'm just saying to make sure you read the reviews, or go through curators (several of which will be listed below), before you buy.
Now that that is out of the way, I’m going to go down a list of concerns you may have for why not, and then explain the how.
“I don’t want to learn a whole new set of rules after I already spent so much time learning D&D5e.��
Learning a new set of rules is not going to be as hard as you think. Most other TTRPGs aren’t like that. D&D5e is far on the high end of the scale for TTRPGs being hard and time-consuming to learn and play. If you’ve only played D&D5e, it might trick you into thinking that learning any TTRPG is an overwhelmingly time-consuming task, but this is really mostly a D&D5e problem, not a TTRPG problem as a whole.
“D&D5e has all of these extra online tools to help you play it.”
So what? People have been playing TTRPGs without the help of computers for 50 years. To play a well-designed TTRPG you won’t need a computer. Yes, even if you're bad at math. There are some TTRPGs out there that barely even use math.
“I’m too invested in the narrative and characters of my group’s current ongoing D&D5e campaign to switch to something else.”
There are other games, with better design made by better people for less money, that are the same kind of game as D&D5e, that your current characters, lore, and plot will fit right into and do it better. And no, it's not just Pathfinder, there's others.
“I can’t afford to play another TTRPG.”
You probably can. If you’ve only played D&D5e, you might have been made to think that TTRPGs are a very expensive hobby. They aren’t. D&D5e is actually uniquely expensive, costing more than 3x more than the next most expensive TTRPG I can think of right now. Even on the more expensive end, other TTRPG books will cost you no more than $60, most will cost you less than $20, and a whole lot of them are just free. If you somehow still can’t afford another TTRPG, come to the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book club mentioned below, nominate the game, and if it wins the vote we will straight up buy it for you.
(By the way, if you had any of the above concerns about trying other games besides D&D5e, that really makes it sound like you are in a textbook abusive relationship with D&D5e. This is how abusers control their partners, and how empires control their citizens, by teaching you to think that nothing could ever get any better, and even though they treat you bad, the Other will treat you even worse.)
“If I don’t play D&D5e, which TTRPG should I play?”
That’s a pretty limited question to be asking, because there will be no one TTRPG for everything. And no, D&D5e is not the one TTRPG for everything, Hasbro’s marketing team is just lying to you. (Pathfinder and PbtA are not the one system for everything either!) Do you only play one video game or only watch one movie or only read one book? When you finish watching an action movie like Mad Max, and then you want to watch a horror movie, do you just rewind Mad Max and watch it over again but this time you act scared the whole time? No, you watch a different movie. I’m asking you to give the artistic medium of TTRPGs the same respect you would give movies.
“I want to play something besides D&D5e, but my friends won’t play anything else!”
I have several answers to this.
Try showing them this post.
If that doesn’t work: Make them. Put your foot down. This works especially well if you are the DM. Tell them you won’t run another session of D&D5e until they agree to give what you want to do at least one try instead of always doing only what they want to do. This is, like, playing 101. We learned this in kindergarten. If your friend really wants to play something else, you should give their game a try, or you’re not really being a very good friend.
If that doesn’t work, find another group. This doesn’t even mean that you have to leave your existing group. A good place to start would be the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club which will be mentioned and linked below. You can also go to the subreddit of any game you’re interested in and probably meet people there who have the same problem you do and want to put together a group to play something other than D&D5e. You might get along great with these people, you might not, but you won’t know until you try. Just make sure to have a robust “session zero” so everyone is on the same page. This is a good practice for any group but it is especially important for a group made of players you’ve just met.
“I only watch actual plays.”
Then watch actual plays of games that aren’t D&D5e. These podcasts struggle for the same reasons that indie RPGs struggle, because of the brand recognition and brand loyalty D&D5e has, despite their merit. I don’t watch actual plays, or else I would be able to list more of them. So, anyone who does watch actual plays, please help me out by commenting on this post with some non-D&D5e actual plays you like. And please do me a favor and don’t list actual plays that only play one non-D&D5e system, list ones that go through a variety of systems. The first one I can think of is Tiny Table.
“I can just homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e.”
Even though I want to, I’m not going to try and argue that you can’t actually homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e. Instead, I’m going to ask you why you’re buying two $50 rulebooks just to throw away half the pages. In most other good RPGs, you don’t need to change the rules to make them fun, they’re fun right out the box.
“But homebrewing D&D5e into any kind of game is fun! You can homebrew anything out of D&D5e!”
Firstly, I promise that this is not unique to D&D5e. Secondly, then you would probably have more fun homebrewing a system that gives you a better starting point for reaching your goal. Also, what if I told you that there are entire RPG systems out there that are made just for this? There are RPG systems that were designed for the purpose of being a toolbox and set of materials for you to work with to make exactly the game you want to make. Some examples are GURPS, Savage Worlds, Basic RolePlaying, Caltrop Core, and (as much as I loathe it) PbtA.
“I’m not supporting WotC’s monopoly because I pirate all the D&D5e books.”
Then you’re still not supporting the smaller developers that this monopoly is crushing, either.
Now, here’s the how. Because I promise you, there’s not just one, but probably a dozen other RPGs out there that will scratch your exact itch.
Here’s how to find them. This won’t be a comprehensive list because I’ve already been typing this for like 3 hours already. Those reading this, please go ahead and comment more to help fill out the list.
First, I’m gonna plug one of my own major projects, because it’s my post. The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club. It’s a discord server that treats playing TTRPGs like a book club, with the goal of introducing members to a wide variety of games other than D&D5e. RPGs are nominated by members, then we hold a vote to decide what to read and play for a short campaign, then we repeat. There is no financial, time, or schedule investment required to join this book club, I promise it is very schedule-friendly, because we assign people to different groups based of schedule compatibility. You don’t have to play each campaign, or any campaign, you can just read along and participate in discussion that way. And if you can’t afford to buy the rulebook we’re going to be reading, we will make sure you get a PDF of it for free. That is how committed we are to getting non-D&D5e RPGs into people’s hands. Here is an invite link.
Next, there are quite a few tumblr blogs you can follow to get recommendations shown to you frequently.
@indierpgnewsletter
@indie-ttrpg-of-the-day
@theresattrpgforthat
@haveyouplayedthisttrpg
@indiepressrevolution
Plenty of podcasts, journalists, and youtubers out there do in-depth discussions of different systems regularly, a couple I can think of off the top of my head are:
Storyteller Conclave (I’m actually going to be interviewed live on this show on April 10th!)
Seth Skorkowsky
Questing Beast
The Gaming Table
Rascal News
Lastly, you can just go looking. Browse r/rpg, drivethrurpg.com, indie press revolution, and itch.io.
Now, if you really want to support me and my team specifically Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is going to launch on Kickstarter on April 10th and we need all the help we can get. Set a reminder from the Kickstarter page through this link.
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, there’s plenty of ways to get one!
Subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!
Donate to our ko-fi and send us an email with proof that you did, and we’ll email you back with the full Eureka prerelease package with the most updated version at the time of responding! (The email address can be found if you scroll down to the bottom of our website.)
We also have merchanise.
#dnd#dnd5e#dnd 5e homebrew#dungeons and dragons#d&d#d&d 5e#dungeons and dragons 5e#dnd 5e#5e#homebrew#dungeons & dragons#critical role#crit role#dimension 20#actual play#matt mercer#wizards of the coast#wotc#hasbro#ttrpgs#ttrpg#ttrpg community#ttrpg tumblr#tabletop#roleplay#roleplaying#roleplaying games#tabletop roleplaying#tabletop role playing game#fantasy rpg
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Idk I just really love that Matt, Aabria, and Brennan were just like, “Do you guys wanna be friends and make fun stuff together?”
And then they did. And they trusted each other with their own creations.
I just think they’re neat.
#Dimension 20#Ravening War#Critical Role#exu calamity#Exandria Unlimited#Matt Mercer#brennan lee mulligan#aabria iyengar#I love them#D20#CR#ttrpg#tabletop role playing game#DnD#dungeons and dragons
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I threw a party so I could meet death. She was really nice and had a giant collection of ttrpgs that I could play in the afterlife with her. My dad then got home, somehow knew what I was trying to do, and then got so mad at me for dying that I came back to life.
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How to react to your friend’s death
#Dnd#dndmeme#che crawford#art#comic#cartoon#the immortal think tank#comics#webtoon#webcomic#dungeons and dragons#dnd art#dnd character#dnd5e#table top role playing game#tabletop#roleplay#rpg#gaming
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Gloxie!
New ancestry art for our TTRPG system Anyventure D12!
Creatures from a frozen, glacial moon. They are the product of a magical experiment gone wrong, and mostly work as arcane assistants. They are also very vulnerable to compliments!
If you're interested in module based character creation, check out our website! : https://anyventured12.com/
#digital art#art#digital drawing#drawing#illustration#ttrpg art#ttrpg character#ttrpg design#ttrpg#ttrpg community#tabletop role playing game#tabletop#tabletop games#homebrew#indiedev#indie#indie games#fantasy art#artwork#artists on tumblr#fox#vulpine#fluffy#cute#samoyed#samoyeds
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Coming Soon - Terror on the Rock! A One Shot Scenario for Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition!
Cover art not final, do not duplicate
Hello everyone! Do you love to play Call of Cthulhu 7th edition? Want a scenario set on the world’s most notorious prison? If so, I have something in store for you soon! On April 1st, I will be releasing the second of my “On the Rock” series of scenarios set on Alcatraz in the 1930’s.
You and your friends will play inmates who have to confront mundane…
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