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caltrop core hit 20,000 downloads??

thank y'all so much!!

if you've ever wanted to make your own ttrpg but didn't know where to start, click here to check out caltrop core. it's free and open license. and it uses exclusively d4s!

cover mockup for Even the Worms Will Spit You Out, May's upcoming RPG of the month over on patreon

a point crawl ttrpg about escaping Florida (which i recently did and am still emotionally processing via art like this)

cover mockup for Even the Worms Will Spit You Out, May's upcoming RPG of the month over on patreon

a point crawl ttrpg about escaping Florida (which i recently did and am still emotionally processing via art like this)

UNLIMITED LAOGANMA ON PLAIN FOODS!!!!

caltrop core hit 20,000 downloads??

thank y'all so much!!

if you've ever wanted to make your own ttrpg but didn't know where to start, click here to check out caltrop core. it's free and open license. and it uses exclusively d4s!

caltrop core hit 20,000 downloads??

thank y'all so much!!

if you've ever wanted to make your own ttrpg but didn't know where to start, click here to check out caltrop core. it's free and open license. and it uses exclusively d4s!

After The Bomb

There's an official Fallout ttrpg. I've read it. It's okay!

There's also, completely fanmade, After The Bomb.

And I want to put After The Bomb on your radar, because it's very, very good.

ATB uses a simple d20 + stat system, with bonuses from gear and perks factored in. You have a HP track, which burns at both ends from radiation and damage, and also a survival track that breaks pieces of your equipment whenever it depletes. Rolls are player-made, and the system spends a lot of time in that osr headspace where it cares more about the choices the players make than how they built their character. The game's currency is Junk, and you spend it repairing your gear and crafting consumables.

Levelling up is surprisingly rich with choice, and fights and obstacles are tense and deadly. Again, the core mechanics are simple, but they use this simplicity to push complex choices towards the players. You see a piece of valuable Junk floating in a bog. Do you go in and take a point of radiation? Risk coming back later? Waste your own Junk fashioning a contraption to try and get it out?

After The Bomb comes with its own sandbox campaign set in Minnesota, plus a *lot* of GM support for stuff like factions, monsters, and basebuilding.

It's a gem in our current pre-apocalypse, and I strongly recommend giving it a look.

A call to action: review games you love!

If you enjoyed an independent TTRPG you played recently, go give a review! It takes less than a couple of minutes and can really help the creators of the games you love! I've just reviewed a few of my recent favourites (Exquisite Biome, RUNE and I'm Sorry Did You Say Street Magic) and wanted to encourage others to do the same!

I'd love if people reblogged with their favourite games, I'm always looking for more to check out!

You have to take a vocational course to become a proper Wizard. Everyday folk might have picked up some things in secondary school, an amateur can still know their way around a staff or a wand but to get a license you need to have completed the course and passed the tests. Then you're a big fancy Wizard! But that's a lot of cost to have sunk into the thing and it does raise the question: are you sure you made the right call?

My editor-girlfriend described the Wizard playbook in PSYCHODUNGEON as Degree Regret: The Class. It's a lot about feeling stuck because of the time and effort you've put into something. A lot of the vulnerable moves are about facing this not being what you thought'd be like.

There's a decent chunk of why I quit teaching there. I also liked recasting the wizard as a working class job rather than something implicitly academic.

When you all make your psychoplumbers you ask questions to your right and left to establish some starting dynamics. Two of the Wizard's options really jab at the heart of the character.

What do you think I'd be happier as?

Why do you think I'm good at this job?

In PSYCHODUNGEON we delve into nightmarish psychostructures, battle monsters, navigate a hostile domain, and help the mind the dungeon sprung from gain closure. We do this for a meagre paycheck. On the surface we try to get by living our lives in a busy city that wouldn't miss you if you fell off the face of the planet.

Coming to Kickstarter this May. Please follow the pre-launch page. This is the first of a series of posts I'll do all about different aspects of the game. Do let me know if there's anything you're especially curious about.

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR is a solo tarot TTRPG of character autonomy.

Play as a Character attempting to gain agency by wresting narrative control from their Author.

Gameplay involves drawing tarot cards for Scene Prompts, events written by the Author. The Character then edits these prompts to shape the story to their will.

Use caution - tampering with the narrative draws the attention of the Author, who might retaliate by using the Character’s own words against them.

Death of the Author will be crowdfunding on Backerkit starting May 14th. Follow the page to be notified when it launches!

could you explain what you mean about neon white? bc I felt the same way when I finished it but couldn't quite articulate what I didn't like about the story

sure--on a pure plot level, right, 'believers have usurped the true will of god by being self-righteous and self-serving and it must be restored' is the core premise at the heart of the game. god is Good, god's system of judgement and mastery of the cosmos is Good, restoring it is Good. "christianity is fundamentally good, but the people who practice it have lost sight of the Real (Good) Christian Morals" is not an uncommon take among liberal christians, but i think it is silly and wrong because religion is not true, it only exists as a social fact, there is no 'christianity' that can be divorced from christians, because 'christianity' can only be located in the world within the actions and beliefs of christians.

and then on the thematic level, the game has a singleminded obsession with the nobility of forgiveness, a moral it beats in with a sledgehammer like a sonic sez segment every chance it gets. red forgiving white, white forgiving green, violet and white forgiving each other, green not forgiving blue--the game is very very explicit that forgiveness is the be-all and end-all of morality. and this is like a spectacularly christian concept!

so yeah depiste the like edgy demon 2006 scene kid aesthetic i think neon white is ironically much less subversive than the edgy anime and pop punk music it takes its aesthetic cues from because it essentially comes out swinging wholeheartedly for christian morality. embarassing tbh

a poem about amorphous things

this poem, along with four others and five by the beautiful mineral magnesium oxide, are up for PWYW on my itch. plaintext under the cut:

I am vat-born and decanted into my new body. I am holy, neutral, features soft and melting into clay injection molds. It took one thousand frantic iterations to persuade myself into this solid state. Born on a winter’s parasite eve.

My first unsteady steps across the tiles trail my crimson clues. I transform myself across the floor. Through every doorway. Trademarks and copyrights for third-party games and characters are chances to live a bigger life.

Half of you became dulled when the earth produced a new American naturalist, when God gave me a few more stolen inches of undersampled skin. When I chew up the day and spit it out I give no credit to the culture or the flame.

it’s so insanely fascistic that literally every children’s movie is about how important and good the nuclear family is