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theresattrpgforthat · 2 hours

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Been away at GAMA this week but I wrote this game on the first leg of the trip home.

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theresattrpgforthat · 4 hours

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History of Steampunk & Victoriana RPGs (Part 4 2007-2008)

Over on Age of Ravens I present this look at Steampunk & Victoriana ttrpgs from from 2007 to 2008. From Clock and Steam to Magicians of England, Ghosts of Albion to Open Anima, Sundered Skies to Sweet Chariot. A revisit of a piece from 2013.

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theresattrpgforthat · 7 hours

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I was interviewed on Storyteller Conclave!

You’ve probably seen several posts on here about how I’m going to be on Storyteller Conclave talking about Eureka. If you haven’t, you’re going to, because there’s still some in the queue and I’m not going to remove them.

But, that happened, and it was a great time! You can listen to the episode here, here, here, or here!

I wasn’t on my A-game the whole time unfortunately, I had some mic trouble for about the first 20 minutes, along with some other distractions on my end that kept me from focusing early on, but luckily I had team member @ashweather to support me and help me out.

If you can bear with the rocky start, there’s a lot of good insight into the design of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy in this podcast, and a lot of it goes into stuff that we haven’t really covered on this blog, especially the themes.

We talk about the realistic and simulationist nature of Eureka and how this serves its gameplay and themes, we talk about how it takes inspiration from John Woo films such as Hard Boiled, its pretty unique approach to the concept of HP, how it approaches and flips the concept of "winning", and its deeply character-driven nature.

Of course we also talk about Eureka's unique and awesome rules for investigative gameplay, and how it improves upon games that did investigative gameplay before it. How it trusts the players' intellect, but also won't leave them totally twisting in the wind after a bad roll or two!

My favorite thing we talked about, near the end of the show, was Eureka’s approach to monsters, disability, and its sympathy towards “bad people.” I’m actually going to be writing a whole essay on this topic hopefully before the Kickstarter ends on May 10th, but you can get a really good gist of it just from listening to this episode of the podcast.

Oh and on that subject, the hosts, two veteran Vampire: The Masquerade players, said in the show that in many ways, Eureka does vampires better than VTM. Like, wow, that’s high praise..

Here’s a reminder also that Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is kickstarting from right now until May 10th, 2024. Back it and get yourself a copy plus custom artwork or the chance to get your blood sucked by vampires as an entry on the random victim tables for playable monster PCs! With every stretch goal we meet, the game gets better and better. Tons of beautiful new artwork, new options for gameplay, and even two entirely new playable Monsters could be added to the book, so visit the Kickstarter and secure your copy today!

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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.

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theresattrpgforthat · 9 hours

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Have you play SHADOWDARK RPG ?

By Kelsey Dionne/The Arcane Library

Shadowdark is an "old school renaissance" game with modernized mechanics, that's primarily about exploring dungeons and finding treasure while contending with monsters. It's designed to be familiar to players of modern RPGs like 5e, with streamlined mechanics that focus on its core themes, including dungeon-crawling that's tracked in rounds, fast & low HP combat with monster morale rolls, treasure-based XP with randomized character progression, and torches that burn out in 1 hour of real time.

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theresattrpgforthat · 12 hours

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Would you ever consider releasing a physical edition of GREED?

A physical edition of GREED is something we totally want to do, but have no specific time-plan to make happen (as of right now...). The idea of GREED being black and white was partly to make it easy to print at home, so whatever a new edition of GREED would be called, it would be expanded with new art, full color formatting, extra items/monsters, etc.

Before we do that, there's at least 2 projects coming down the chute. The first is All The Aces, a noir detective game using the GREED system, whose rulebook is done but whose starting adventure needs to be finished. The second is Seasickness, a weird occult pirate game, the true new-system followup to GREED, also made by myself and CXA. We intend to do a physical release of Seasickness, and see how that goes... see, then, if we want to return to the well with GREED.

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theresattrpgforthat · 13 hours

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Any recommendations for longer-than-one-shot games that feature player characters managing a tension between two (or more) of their characteristics?

I love a Lasers & Feelings hack, but they're definitely not geared for campaigns!

THEME: Character Tension!!!

Hello friend! I couldn’t think of many games that used the same kind of tension present in Lasers and Feelings, but Honey Heist hits a lot of the same key notes I think - that of pulling your characters closer and closer to one end or the other. So I looked for games that give you tools to alter your chances of success - at the cost of pulling you towards one sort of ending or another. These endings shouldn’t be something you can hit in only one game, but is likely to happen over the course of a short campaign.

Ares Ascendant, by Dan Brown.

Colonizing Mars is more than an exercise of grit and technology and science. It’s politics and economics, too. It’s forming a new social, political, and economic framework in which humanity can thrive, all within a hostile environment. Human achievement won’t be marked by getting to Mars. It will be marked by humanity’s ability to stay there.

In Ares Ascendant, players assume the roles of Earth’s best and brightest, the group who will establish the first Martian colony. They won’t start entirely from scratch, as their transport ship is loaded with supplies, and unmanned vessels have been dropping equipment over the last several years. Despite the head start, however, the group will be responsible for getting things ready for more colonists.

Ares Ascendant uses the PARAGON system, replacing the Glory/Pathos meters with a Renown/Fatigue dichotomy instead. Your characters are trying to develop the first Martian colony, which is both a high-profile and a taxing job. When you do the best out of your companions on an action, you gain Renown, which basically acts as a measure of how many people will remember what you contributed to the mission.

If you want to increase your chances of success on any given roll, you can spend a point of Fatigue to push yourself and add an extra dice from one of your character’s Domains. If you fill up your Fatigue track, you mark a point of Reputation. When you fill your Reputation track, your story is over, and your Renown will determine how well-known you are. All in all, how hard will you push yourself, and will you lose your chance at making history if you try too hard to succeed on your own?

Ash Island, by Brian Binh.

Ash Island is a roleplaying game of pain, darkness, despair, and hope for a GM and one or more players, set in a fog-shrouded New England town on a small island dominated by an evil force that manifests the characters' own inner demons to torment them.

You take the role of anchorites, unfortunate souls bound to the dark spirit of the island by the unique suffering of their own personal sins or trauma. You answered the island's siren call and find yourself trapped in a ghost town full of dangerous monsters. Unarmed and alone, you must use your talents to explore, arm yourself, and find a way to escape. Of course, you can't just run away. There's something else you have to do first…

Ash Island is built on the Ruled by Night SRD, which uses two pools of resources called Shadow and Flame. I’m not entirely sure if these pools retain the same name in this hack, but the way they work should stay the same. You can accumulate Shadow through successfully stealthing from one point to another, while you accumulate Flame when you must resort to (loud and flashy) violence. A higher Flame pool requires you to spend more Shadow in order to have a success, and you can only reduce your Flame after you’ve taken care of another penalty called Suspicion. These two pools should pull your characters between a way out that is difficult but keeps you safe, or a way out that is easy but draws more and more danger your way.

Part-Time Gods, by Third Eye Games.

The gods of today are shadows of what the old gods possessed. Their power has been heavily diminished, and many choose to live a regular, mortal life, revealing themselves as gods only when absolutely necessary. They have a mortal life, a job (or career if they’re lucky), friends, family, and everything that comes with being human, and they work hard to protect these things from harm. On the other side of the coin, they also have a Dominion to command and oversee, a deific Territory to defend from intruders, secret societies to which they owe allegiances (called Theologies), and other gods in their pantheon to try to get along with. This becomes their life, the balancing of the mortal and the divine, the normal and the supernatural, the mundane and the strange.

Part-Time Gods Second Edition (PTG2E) is the latest iteration of an amazing setting about gods and the people, groups, and places in their lives that keep them tied to their humanity.

In Part-Time Gods, your character has to balance how much of their time they spend on their godly duties, and how much of their time they spend on their mundane jobs and relationships. When you create your character, you’ll take options that give you either more free time or more money, and both of these resources are needed to help manage your responsibilities. This game does a really good job of exemplifying the balancing act of your characters’ lives in it’s rules - although it also requires a bit of bookkeeping in order to keep track of all of your responsibilities. Out of all of the games listed here, I think PTG is the most suited for a very long campaign.

Cthulhu Deep Green, by Dissonance.

Building upon the groundwork set out in Cthulhu Dark by Graham Walmsley, Cthulhu Deep Green contains a modified rules set for playing as Agents of The Conspiracy: a shadowy government agency tasked with concealing evidence of the supernatural.

Cthulu Deep Green has a fairly simplistic ruleset, with one character resource called Stress that you will mark every time you roll. In CDG, you will often find yourself rolling with something called a Dark Dice, which will add to your Stress level if it is the highest-rolled result out of your entire pool. Adding a Dark Dice might be required if you want a chance to success, or to re-try for something better, but take too much and you’ll burn out. I’m not entirely sure how fast the Stress accumulation happens in this game - I think if your play group is roleplay heavy, you might be able to play this game over quite a few sessions before your characters get completely burned out.

Those of Us Who Know Better, by C.J.Linton.

Those of Us Who Know Better is a tabletop roleplaying game about transgender superheroes whose powers come at a price. Civilians by day, in community every other Thursday evening, and heroes by night, the players use their powers to problem solve and offer protection and support around town. These powers must be used sparingly, however, because every use of a superpower demands a specific and costly remuneration.

The tension that exists in this game lies in the consequences of using your powers. When you create your superhero, you choose a superpower and a consequence. You can use the superpower, but immediately after you must do something else, as well as take a (temporary) hit to one of your stat modifiers. As a result, your stats will increase and decrease as you play.

Games I've Talked About Before

Apocalypse Keys is all about fighting the Harbinger inside you; you have the potential to both save the world and end it - will your companions save you from your doom, or drag you closer to it?

The Empire Undying uses the same number-between-two-stats as Lasers and Feelings, but I think it's designed for a longer run-time than just a one-shot, and not just because you're using a larger number range (2-9 instead of 2-5).

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #dnd #game recommendations #asks #character tension

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theresattrpgforthat · 15 hours

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theresattrpgforthat · 17 hours

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Now at IPR: Thirty Foes OR Once again, we are defeated!

A map-making/storytelling game inspired by Seven Samurai. Play brave outsiders protecting a village in peril, but at what cost?

Within a space fantasy western setting you tell the tale of brave Godslingers, cosmic cowboys with divine firepower, attempting to defend a village from the thirty strong bandit army that is approaching.

https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Thirty-Foes-OR-Once-again-we-are-defeated-Print-PDF.html

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theresattrpgforthat · 1 day

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Monster Care Squad Is Free

You've heard of Monster Care Squad, of course, the TTRPG where you play as unstoppably cool elite veterinarians traveling a world unlike any fantasy land you've set foot in? The one that's about investigating a mysterious sickness that sends the guardians of this world berserk? It's the one with dozens and dozens of unique towns and magical creatures, illustrated by @leafie-draws? It's like pacifist and communal and all about those small stories but with a big actiony set piece? It's the one with the space station and the lil goat with opposable thumbs Anyway, it's free, right here https://monstercaresquad.web.app/

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theresattrpgforthat · 1 day

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The Eureka trailer is so cool oh cool they have a kicked starter too

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theresattrpgforthat · 1 day

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BABEL is on sale!

As part of the itch.io Spring Sale, BABEL is 25% off! You can grab a super cool Dungeon Crawling Gameplay Focused TTRPG for just $3.75!

Also! Sorry for the lack of updates on Surf and Sorcery, I promise it is still in development. I am a one-person operation and these games are not my full time job, so when things get busy this tends to fall by the wayside. More work coming soon.

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theresattrpgforthat · 1 day

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Next Wednesday, April 24th at 1:00 PM EST, it's the second episode of the Seven Part-Pact Preview Actual Play, where we play @jdragsky's awesome wizard game, with art by @ribstongrowback! Tune in for otter thieves, strange pilgrims and other hijinks!

Follow my Twitch to keep updated, and check out the first VOD on Youtube!

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theresattrpgforthat · 1 day

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Dungeon Malarky from Levi Combs forced me to add a third row to my RPG zine wall!

How many can YOU identify?

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theresattrpgforthat · 1 day

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World Ending Game - Saying Goodbye With Style

“Think about screenplays and films, or the final episode of a television show that you know will not be renewed. Think about saying goodbye to friends who are moving away. Think about the last day of summer vacation. Think about funerals. Think about the restaurant that closed all those years ago, and the noodles they used to serve. Think about the best birthday party you ever had. Think about…

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theresattrpgforthat · 2 days

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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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theresattrpgforthat · 2 days

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its 5 in the morning and i made an RPG

Back. Better than ever (no im not).

have you ever wanted to play a homeless street wizard? What about a fighter/bouncer with a sword? perhaps a tiefling out for blood with a walkman?

That's right baby: I made a TTRPG specifically for that.

If it receives enough attention, i'll be giving it more content than it has right now, which is not a lot considering its proof-of-concept status.

You can find it here:

also help me out here and get this to people to see thanks

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theresattrpgforthat · 2 days

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The Forces at Play from To Embrace a Swamp Creature

There are four Forces at Play (the term for what in other games might be called setting elements) in To Embrace a Swamp Creature. They all have their own token pools (which was inspired by Pillars in Galactic 2e).

The preview page here is "The Wounds of Austerity and the Misguided Dream of a Place Less Scarred". In addition there's:

The Conservative Attitudes That Surround You

The Ghosts of Memories, All Around

The Stench

They're an interesting mix. A place being defined by it's material conditions, a place being define by it's occupants, a place being defined by a personal association and then an element that is the least focused on place.

You can buy To Embrace a Swamp Creature digitally on Itch or physically at the new Rat Wave Webstore

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