Into the Blind free rules available now!

Into the Blind is a sci-fi roleplaying game for 3-5 people, inspired by media such as The Expanse, Gravity, Arrival and Annihilation, and TTRPGs like Trophy, Mothership and Alien: The Roleplaying Game.

You are Salvager, Courier, Bodyguard, First Responder, Investigator, Debt Collector; whatever you need to be to make ends meet. You will be eaten by the machine the Company owns and operates, or you’ll die trying to escape it. You are subject to the inexorable forces of the universe. You are a mass moving through a vast field of factors and probabilities. You are a ship alone at sea, and the stories of sailors are the strangest and saddest.

You are a Freelancer. If the debt doesn't get you, the darkness will.

So psyched to put this out and talk more about it in the future. The full version will be coming later, but the basic rules to the game will always be free - everything you need to create a crew of Freelancers and run a session, so grab your sci fi adventure pamphlets and get busy dying in space.

Itch is a little weird about mixing paid content and free content, but visit the itch page and scroll to the bottom, the Free Rules are under the Download Demo header:

It's my birthday today! 🎉 In honour of that, I'm running a sale on a bunch of my games on Itchio for the next seven days! It's 36% off because that's how old I'm turning this year.

Pick up a game about witches, journeys, lesser gods or dying cities - or buy them all at once!

I'm gonna be on a panel tomorrow (4/6) at Big Bad Con Online, hanging out with @temporalhiccup and talking about horror and ttrpgs!

Horror is one of my favorite genres, so I am very excited to discuss the challenges and opportunities that ttrpgs offer within horror!

First playtest of Stampede Wasteland just wrapped up, and mission accomplished, the game is fun 😤

More specifically, the fighting style auto-hit mechanic felt cool to see in play and created the sorts of situations and player choices I was hoping it would. Always nice to see things work out how you hoped they would!

Shoutout to @aaronsrpgs, @keganexe, @ladytabletop, and @temporalhiccup for being such fun players and diving into everything!

Anyways, speaking of working on games, how about some Stampede Wasteland updates;

Working on a carousing table;

Also a little table to inspire GMs when they need to whip up a last second mission;

And the highlight of this post, rules for tracking Resources and rules for tracking money. Resources first.

The goal was to come up with an abstracted way of keeping track of the more mundane supplies and stuff that PCs are going to need without having to worry about actually keeping track of things. So, behold, either you have it or you don't.

Resources Each player has an abstract, binary pool of Resources. This covers rations, water, fuel, bullets. All the bare necessities. If it is ever in question whether you have Resources or not, roll+Hits marked. On a success, you’re out of what you need. You either have Resources or you don’t. There’s no in between. 

And now for wealth. Originally, I had a pretty standard "this sort of things costs this much" and "this job might reward this much". But here's the thing, coming up with actual monetary values sucks and I hate doing it! Also, given that supplies are abstract, why shouldn't money be abstract? Internal consistency is nice.

So, two birds one stone, I ripped out the original "wealth system" and replaced it with the following;

Cash Each player has an abstract pool of cash on hand at any given moment. The exact amount doesn’t matter. You can have No Money, A Little Money, A Lot of Money, or More Money Than You Could Ever Imagine (you cannot actually ever have this much money, bummer).  Each time you gain A Little Money, mark one slot on the track (10 slots). Once the track is filled up, you have A Lot of Money.  If you have A Little Money, you can always afford things that cost A Little Money. Same for A Lot of Money. If a situation ever arises where you might lose money, roll+money slots marked vs 20. On a success, you’re good. On a miss, step down one wealth level.  Money is tracked individually, but you can give a slot of Money to someone else if you really want. Cash rewards go to whoever is the agreed upon treasurer. Hope you trust them. If a character ever dies with wealth on them, half the number of marked money slots can be recovered from their remains, rounded down to a minimum of zero.  Nobody starts the game with any money.

Ultimately, how much money you have wasn't going to matter in the game beyond bookkeeping, just whether or not you had enough. And this subsystem represents that better. I ended up going with "roll+money slots marked" as the "modifier" to the roll because it makes some sense that the more cash you have, the harder it is to lose it all.

Still plugging away at the GM facing material, but honestly, almost all the player-facing stuff is done (and I'm going to be doing some small playtesting, before maybe opening it up some. We'll see.), and it is nice to get closer and closer to text-complete.

I'm trying to write about this without getting emotional, but it's pretty hard! Hah!

But it's been officially announced so I can finally talk about it! I'm the Lead Designer (damn) on the official Tomb Raider TTRPG (double damn). Shadows of Truth has a public playtest coming up soon, and I'm excited for folks to see what we've been working on!

It's been a wild ride and a fun time, but this is also the biggest challenge I've had to face as a ttrpg designer. Like many indie folks I've drawn inspiration from the media we love (Apocalypse Keys is proudly Hellboy-inspired, among other things!) while still making it our own unique thing.

Tomb Raider has been completely different, in that I have to do my best to translate some awesome video game history into a ttrpg experience. And I gotta be as true to the source material and experience as possible, while still centering what makes ttrpgs great!

Tomb Raider is also a franchise that's been around for almost 30 years and is a HUGE DEAL. It's hard to describe how much of an impact it's made on action-adventure video games, repeatedly! Lara Croft is easily one of the most iconic characters in video games and the genre, and her Adventures include (several) dinosaurs, wild transhuman demonic Atlantean stuff, and apocalypse-inducing artifacts.

But Lara to me, especially since the 2013 game, has been a truly amazing and conflicted heroine. The last three games that grounded her and made her vulnerable, while still creating intense experiences, really hooked me. I really wanted to honor the journey of Tomb Raider and make a really fun and thrilling ttrpg for folks.

But anyone who knows me, knows that anti-colonial design is in all my games. It's just who I am, and it's not something I consciously did at first. It wasn't even until I started designing ttrpgs, in my 30s, that I realized how important my personal decolonization process was, and a lot of that has helped me discover new aspects of my identity (including being a transmasculine person).

So, I don't need to tell you that a franchise called Tomb Raider has some colonial implications, right?

As development goes on, folks have asked me "How is the game anti-colonial?" or "How are you addressing the colonialism?" I want to start off by saying as a team we conceptualized what that could mean while still being true to the franchise. But since then, as Lead Designer, I've had to make hundreds of decisions that are reflected in countless design and structural choices. I can point to dozens of mechanics and things and describe how this is my personal attempt to present anti-colonial gaming, and I'm grateful for the help our team of consultants and playtesters in guiding me.

It's kind of wild, but in chasing after and reaching for anti-colonial design, I've had to figure out how to implement great tech from other designers, but also come up with lots of new stuff too. There's some really cool Adventure design stuff that is really hard to pull off in a PbtA framework where you play to find out. (Arguably, PbtA itself has a lot of anti-colonial play about it compared to mainstream ttrpgs and it's one of the reasons we used PbtA as a design framework but that's a whole other conversation)

I'm really so grateful for the support from the team! It's hard to feel like I'm good enough and can measure up to Evil Hat's faith in me, but they've been incredibly supportive and open, and it's been stellar. Crystal Dynamics has also been amazing to work with, especially because it was important to me that while we honor how awesome Tomb Raider is, we don't downplay the difficult truths of colonialism and its ongoing effects. And they were so incredibly on board for that! It's so rare for a marginalized person like me to be granted an opportunity like this, and I am determined to give it my all.

We've built a team that's been amazing to collaborate with, and @ostrichmonkey-games has been doing incredible work alongside me. I'm really proud of what we're doing as a team! I can't wait for folks to see it come together.

You can also check out the Polygon (!!!) article about the game, which gives you a sense of some of the cool mechanics at play!

I know it's easy to write off an IP ttrpg based on a really big franchise (and for good reasons, unfortunately). But I really do think we're doing something special here! I hope y'all will give the game a chance and check it out when the public playtest starts up!

TOMB RAIDER!!

So excited to finally be able to talk about this! But this is the project that has been keeping me busy the past several months!

It's absolutely wild to be part of the team working led by @temporalhiccup, and I am so excited for people to get their hands on the upcoming playtest!! The game does so many cool things and I like to think of it as a parallel, or complementary experience to the video games. It's different, but different is good. And the way the whole experience is approached is incredibly thoughtful (no plundering tombs for fun and profit here!).

This Polygon article has more info on some of the game elements (and also some playbook previews, including a bit of the Companion which I wrote 👀), so go check it out!

Everyone involved is so talented and passionate about this game, and I am so excited for people to learn more about it!

I'm super stoked to be invited alongside some amazing indie ttrpg folks to talk about the last 50 years of TTRPGS (!!!) and where we're headed.

Meguey and Vincent Baker are the phenomenal folks behind the Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) engine, and without their work so many amazing games wouldn't have gotten made. In all the years I've played TTRPGs, it wasn't until I started playing PbtA games that I finally thought that hey, maybe I can make games too? It's wild to imagine that my initial attempts at PbtA design got to a point where Apocalypse Keys is now on book shelves (W I L D!!!)

I'll be interviewed alongside the Bakers to discuss PbtA design over the years and into the future. Honestly My Soul Leaves My Body each time I think about talking to them (but they're very cool and sweet people, the Bakers have been super influential and supportive of indie design for years and years)

We've got four days left and we're so close to our goal! Help us make this happen?

Folks will also be talking about RPGSEA and labor conditions in the TTRPG space, so definitely check out the link if any of this sounds interesting!

Have you played APOCALYPSE KEYS ?

By Rae Nedjadi @temporalhiccup

The Doomsday Clock is ticking down and emotions run high as you and your team of DIVISION agents struggle to find the Keys before the villainous Harbingers unlock the Doors of Power and bring about the apocalypse.

As an Omen class monster, you are the only thing capable of holding back the apocalypse. Combat occult threats and investigate supernatural phenomena alongside your team of supernatural agents working for the shadowy DIVISION. But in a world that shuns monsters like you, only your deepest, most heartfelt bonds can grant you the power to stop those who seek to unlock Doom’s Door.

(TLDR by the Runner : Another game of queer disasters^^)

We're so excited to have Meg and Vince Baker AND Rae Nedjadi (@temporalhiccup) together to talk Powered by the Apocalpyse for Splat 5!

I’m just thinking about how many times I’ve heard my dad on a long call with an obvious scammer and I’ll start begging him to get off the phone because I always think he’s a very easy mark and he’ll just keep going and then after a while he’ll say something like “I died 20 years ago” and hang up.

I'm super stoked to be invited alongside some amazing indie ttrpg folks to talk about the last 50 years of TTRPGS (!!!) and where we're headed.

Meguey and Vincent Baker are the phenomenal folks behind the Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) engine, and without their work so many amazing games wouldn't have gotten made. In all the years I've played TTRPGs, it wasn't until I started playing PbtA games that I finally thought that hey, maybe I can make games too? It's wild to imagine that my initial attempts at PbtA design got to a point where Apocalypse Keys is now on book shelves (W I L D!!!)

I'll be interviewed alongside the Bakers to discuss PbtA design over the years and into the future. Honestly My Soul Leaves My Body each time I think about talking to them (but they're very cool and sweet people, the Bakers have been super influential and supportive of indie design for years and years)

We've got four days left and we're so close to our goal! Help us make this happen?

Folks will also be talking about RPGSEA and labor conditions in the TTRPG space, so definitely check out the link if any of this sounds interesting!

Happy Lunar New Year!

Hello Tumblr!

I am Adam Vass, I design, illustrate, and publish tabletop rpgs as World Champ Game Co. since 2016, including such absolute bangers as the stoner metal science fantasy Necronautilus, the wonderful cartoony halloween adventure Babes in the Wood, the scumbag retrofuture Cybermetal 2012 and many many more.

All of my games are available in print at my website:

With my best bud Will Jobst, I co-host the Brain Trust RPG podcast, where we talk design theory and philosophy almost every week. We even design full games on-air, including the award-winning This Discord Has Ghosts In It.

Going forward, I hope to use this space to tell you about my new projects, revisit some old ones, spout some theory, and bounce ideas off folks I meet here, let's goooo

TTRPGs for Trans Youth Bundle live!

I'm fundraising for Emerge, my local trans youth group after their funder pulled their grant. Almost 70 TTRPG creators donated almost 120 games and supplements, and you can get them all for $5!

There's some killer stuff in here - Void 1680AM, Slugblaster, Moonlight on Roseville Beach, Foul Play, Valiant Horizon, Lilancholy, .dungeon//remastered, Bump in the Dark, supplements for Bastards, Beam Saber, Girl by Moonlight, and a whole bunch more.

Everything raised will go towards keeping Emerge running, including paying for events (like going to Trans Pride 2024) and workshops for the group!

Thank you so much to everyone who donated games and supplements for this, you're all collectively the best! And if you can't afford $5 right now, just share the post! That's enough!

Splat 5: Golden is Live on Kickstarter

The year 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons* and more excitingly, 50 years of TTRPGs as we know them! To celebrate we are looking back through time to bring you handpicked thoughts about evolutions in labour conditions, the indie scene, Powered by the Apocalypse, and RPG SEA. *Dragons sold separately.

WHAT'S INSIDE THE ZINE?

Interview with Meguey & Vincent Baker (Apocalypse World) in conversation with Rae Nedjadi (Apocalypse Keys) @temporalhiccup about designing the apocalypse over the years.

Interview with Waks Saavedra (Gubat Banwa) @makapatag and momatoes (ARC: Doom) about the rise of the TTRPG industry and culture in SouthEast Asia known as RPG SEA.

Interview with Jay Dragon (Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast) @jdragsky and Orion D Black (WotC & Dimension 20, freelance writer) about labour conditions and being indie in a corporate dragon world.

Back us between Feb 6 11:00am-Feb 7th 11:00am 2024 for an EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT

We're Kickstarting until Feb 20th 9pm EST

Inktober Day 24: Shallow