#role-playing-game

[vforvalensa]

90s indie ttrpgs whip ass

#this is from a book called Superbabes: The Femforce Role Playing Game #ttrpgs #ttrpg

[nymphacae]

it's that time of year

#my art #this is when im called upon by loved ones to reprise my role as mae borowski #while we play through the game #you can find the bigger version of this piece on insta rip #night in the woods #nitw #mae borowski #night in the wood mae

[desksanddorks]

This week Kyle talks about some of the games he got a change to playtest and check out at this year's Unpub! Have you playtested any games recently?

#board #board-games #board-gaming #design #game #game-design #games #gaming #playing #role #role-playing-game #roleplaying #rpg #ttrpg #unpub

[fictionadventurer]

Suzanne Collins: I will write a YA dystopian novel that explores the depravity that humanity is capable of, digs deep into Enlightenment philosophies about the social contract and the best ways to govern people who are capable of great cruelty, shows the horrendous slaughter of children who are deemed less than human by their enemies because of a war they were barely alive for, and shows the character arc of a young man with a sense of superiority who refuses to take the risks of selfless behavior and betrays every friend who comes his way and thus descends from simple selfishness to become a ruthless authoritarian dictator.

Suzanne Collins: And I will also make it

Suzanne Collins: a musical

Suzanne Collins: :)

#the ballad of songbirds and snakes #the hunger games #suzanne collins #if you were wondering yes i'm still obsessing over the soundtrack #but also over the role these songs and music in general plays in the story

[anim-ttrpgs]

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

[oldschoolfrp]

Albedo is the roleplaying game of furries in a crunchy '80s military sci-fi future setting, based on Steve Gallacci's story "Erma Felna: EDF" from his comic Albedo Anthropomorphics (Thoughts & Images, 1988). Gallacci was a technical illustrator for the US Air Force, so you get both "funny animal" comic art and detailed equipment diagrams:

#Albedo #Steve Gallacci #Albedo Anthropomorphics #Erma Felna #furry #sci fi #Erma Felna: EDF #Albedo RPG #Thoughts & Images #1980s #military sci fi #comics #comic art #SA Gallacci #tank #Thoughts and Images #Albedo the Role-Playing Game #Albedo the RPG

[devilry-revelry]

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

[readcritically]

I had a dream that the new Tumblr Discourse ™️ was over a new DND style game where all of the races were types of snakes. People were ragging on anyone who chose to be a paladin corn snake (because obviously corn snakes would never be a paladin.) I'm not entirely convinced it's not already a thing because Tumblr is just Like That, but anyway it was called Cobra King and I want to play it now.

#dnd #table top role playing game #role playing games #i was a garder snake ranger

[rocketorca]

Want to tell better ttrpg stories using monsters? Check out MONSTROUS, an "oops, all flavor" book with no statblocks, lavish art, and robust system-agnostic tools that help you craft rich backstories that tie directly into the bad guys' motivations and actions.

Hi! I'm Amber and I'm a part of Cloud Curio. Cloud Curio is a 4 person collective designing tabletop roleplaying game supplements both whimsical and strange. (We also have a tumblr!) Part of that collective is Kyle Latino aka Map Crow. MONSTROUS was an idea that was born from his Building Better Monsters Playlist! All of the art you see in this post is by Kyle Latino!

Create custom monsters that uniquely fit your world with MONSTROUS! MONSTROUS focuses on narrative impact and is compatible with any fantasy roleplaying game.

If this is interesting to you, def check out our Kickstarter page. There are a lot of cool updates showcasing how to use this book and the design process behind it! We also have a lot of free ttrpg supplements on our itch.io page! Thanks for your time and attention! -Amber

#ttrpg art #ttrpg #ttrpg community #indie ttrpg #ttrpg monsters #system neutral #system agnostic #dnd #dungeons & dragons #role playing games #monsters #lich #dnd art #dnd5e #dungeons and dragons #skeleton #skull #dragon #angels #celestial #d&d #books #kickstarter #d&d 5e #monster books #tabletop rpg #tabletop #tabletop roleplaying #rpg #monster book

[clar-a-m]

what if when (if?) the bells hells and the crown keepers reunite aabria gets to DM at least the first half of that and for the first time in almost 10 years matt gets to be a player in a main campaign and gets to interact with his friends as a player WHAT THEN

#critical role #critical role c3 #critical role spoilers #i would cry #they can't have a billion people at the table for long but at least if BHs gets to interact with the guests aside from just robbie #i feel like it would be a great opportunity to have aabria DM that #and let matt be a player until they decide how to divide the groups #matt the dm finally being squished together with his friends while playing their game #I WOULD CRY OK

[jadequarze]

Replaying ME2 Suicide Mission ost while drawing Imogen with a long coat inspired by the new ME trailer. In my silly little zone

#jade draws #critical role #cr3 #critical role fanart #imogen temult #i have mass effect brain rot right now as Im currently playing the game #and the new N7 trailer with that sleek armor design made my brain go overdrive with Imogen wearing a coat like that #intially tried coloring the coat black but it doesnt fit with her hair color so opted to use the colors i used based on my imogen design #really recommend to listen to ME2 suicide mission ost to get the feel i had drawing this #edited because i typo a number T.T

[shadefish]

The SSC Grayling! a homebrew lancer frame for a client from twitter!

links that you can click to support me and my work

#art #digital art #mecha #lancer #lancer rpg #robot #wolf #dog #rpg #ttrpg #role playing games #sci fi #giant robot #military #guns #sword

[oddthesungod]

hey............ yknow what would be super cool? a crit role fighting game with all the player characters :)))

#critical role #critical role fanart #beauregard lionett #ashton greymoore #critical doodles #i dont even play fighting games but i'd buy a crit role one in a heart beat tbh #i just want to play as cad and have him pummel someone into the ground #anyway god i spent way too long on this #why do i do this to myself

[anim-ttrpgs]

The Kickstarter for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is Live!!

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is our team’s debut TTRPG, over three years in the making! The campaign will run from April 10th to May 10th!

How far would you go to learn the truth?

Play amateur detectives caught up in things they barely understand, and explore how the lives of your characters unravel as they push themselves to dig deeper into the unknown!

Tense investigations!

Delve into an investigation-focused mystery and horror system that lets players take initiative and use their characters’ unique strengths to find clues and deduce conclusions themselves. A few bad rolls won’t get the party hopelessly stuck, but at the same time Eureka respects their intellect and lets them take charge of solving the mystery!

Character-driven gameplay!

Stats and abilities are based on who your character is as a person. Freeform character creation allows you to build a totally unique little guy, and have a totally unique gameplay experience with him! This is supported by the backbone of the Composure mechanic. Stress, fear, fatigue, and hunger will wear your investigators down as they trudge deeper into the unknown. Food, sleep, and connections with their fellow investigators are the only way to keep them going!

Secrets inside and out! 

Any investigator could be a monster, helping their friends while trying not to reveal their true natures. The party will learn to trust and rely on each other, or explode into a tangled net of drama!

Intense, tactical combat! 

Hits are devastating, and misses are unpredictable–firing a gun will always change the situation somehow, for better or for worse!

Now in Technicolor!

Evocative artwork from talented femme-fatales @chaospyromancy and @qsycomplainsalot and the mysterious @theblackwarden paint a gorgeously-realized portrait of a world with shadows lurking in every corner.

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. We are almost at the end, we just need some financial support to put the finishing touches on it and make the final push to get it ready for official release!

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!

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.

#eureka: investigative urban fantasy #ttrpg #rpg #roleplaying #tabletop #eureka #coc #monsters #indie designer #indie #indie games #indiegames #indie game #ttrpg design #ttrpg tumblr #ttrpg art #indie ttrpg #ttrpg community #ttrpgs #free rpg #fantasy rpg #rpgs #supernatural rpg #tabletop roleplaying #roleplay #critical role #roleplaying games #tabletop role playing game #friends at the table #tiny table

[toyourstations]

I'm trying to work out a good way to tell tumblr i made a 2 player game about dracula and jonathan harker cohabitating awkwardly without making it sound like a grift. i truly just think it would be appreciated here at this particular moment in time.

especially as it takes place exlpicitly during chapter 3 of dracula and ya'll probably are only a couple days out from it.

anyway i guess this is the post now.

This Game Takes Place In Dracula's Castle - a two player game about homoerotically testing the boundaries of decorum with a vampire

#dracula #dracula daily #ttrpg #indie game #role playing game

[one-time-i-dreamt]

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.

#dream #death #party #death tw #Tabletop role-playing game #game #gaming #dad #family #father