#dicebreaker

[goblincow]

Here's the big dicebreaker interview with the designers & publishers whose names you know well.

Where do we go next?

I'm advocating for tumblr, and I'm in the PlusOneExp discord (just ask me if you need a link to what I'm finding to be a very welcoming island in the storm).

For now, that will suffice for me. I've tidied up my social links, I've sorted out my instagram and started making good use of the Stories feature, and I've long since given up on twitter. But I'm in a position that I'm yet to release my first project, so I've started at the bottom of the mountain and I won't be hit hard by the loss. I really feel for those who have lost years of hard work & struggle. It must feel like shit.

I appreciate this quote at the end of the article from Jess Levine:

“Every platform wants their walled garden, and the VC money that funded the existence of social media platforms that acted like a public is drying up as they realise maintaining what amounts to public infrastructure isn’t profitable,” Levine said.

“We're basically just speedrunning the neoliberal enclosure of anything resembling a public commons, this time with digital spaces rather than physical ones. As a creator and a generalist that markets their work online—and in some ways, even just as a person—that’s terrifying.”

#twitter #x #ttrpg #dicebreaker #indie ttrpg #tabletop #creator #ttrpg design #indie dev

[monsterfactoryfanfic]

My latest video profiles the creators nominated for Dicebreaker's Rising Star Designer award! I hope it highlights why these people are in contention for the award, and introduces folks to new games.

Transcript here.

#dicebreaker #ttrpg #tabletop games

[rosstar14]

Look at dicebreaker doing the good work and including my favorite chaotic adventurers in their article

#oxventure #Dicebreaker #I'm so glad Oxventure got me in to dnd but also my pocket book is less happy #dungeons and dragons #d&d

[arsene-inc]

Let's look at this list from Dicebreaker

Bad Start with the Dragon Games, to the dungeon with you

Then Pendragon 6E, not my type of fantasy, a pass

Daggerheart : The cards with the character sheets may be interesting, waiting to know more

Stormlight Archive RPG :I should read the books first. a D20 system ? hope they are doing something more. If I remember correctly, the magic system is based on promises and bonds, that is interesting and I will wait to see more

Wilderfeast : Okay so I was part of the wrowdfunding. I like cooking monsters... and there was an apron! I can't say no to an apron! Also the Monster Hunter thing.

Break : Also funded. I wanna be a murder princess

Triangle Agency : Another game funded. Do I have good taste ? A mix of Control, X files and SCP. Honestly I listened to the AP on Party of One @partyofonepod and immediately went to the KS page. A little love for the D4

Through The Hedgerow : Did I miss this ? Usually, the words Neil Gaiman in the description are enough to get my money. Well i'll wit for the release and see then. The illustrations looks great

Eat the reich : Already played actually, but not against another go it was so fun. (maybe with the speedrun system added to it). I love exploding fash.

Shadow Scar : First time hearing about this. Yokais ? tell me more. The guy from Witcher Rpg ? meh.... didn't enjoyed this game and its system.

The Hidden Isle : Have you seen the artwork !? Tarot ? Of course i helped fund this.

Jukebox : The karaoke Musical ?!?

Stonetop : Building a fantasy village ? hmmmm.... Pbta you say ?... let's see for chill sessions.

Shadow of the Weird Wizard : Like D&D with a d20 system ? meh.

#ttrpg #tabletop rpg #tabletop roleplaying #ttrpg stuff #ttrpgs #indie ttrpg #dicebreaker #triangle agency #wilderfeast #eat the reich #ttrpg books

[mrtomftw]

I have no idea how well video does on Tumblr, especially stuff I’d put on TikTok or Insta Reels... But here’s me facing off against the Eurogamer video team (and Wheels from Dicebreaker) live on stage at EGX, and winning.

#EGX #eurogamer.net #eurogamer #dicebreaker

[eldridgetome]

Hey! I wanted to share some creators that I like watching in light of wotc's reprehensible behavior with regards to the OGL, they all follow the theme of showing of cool RPGs

Firstly, Dicebreaker on YouTube, I really like their list videos where they give nice condensed descriptions of various RPGs, really helps you understand the general vibe of those RPGs. They also have much more in-depth content and analysis, and their own website which publishes articles of all things rpg related, really nice to read through for RPG news.

Second, Dave Thaumavore RPG Reviews on YouTube. He gives very in depth analysis of how games play, pros and cons of the system, really gets into the nitty gritty of mechanics. Longer form reviews usually half an hour, a relaxing listen personally. He's created his own smaller rpg, so I trust his opinions on mechanics.

Finally, goblinmixtape on TikTok. They are also a creator of rpgs, and you can really tell they love the hobby and all things indie, a lot of passion and joy in their speech. Short form content, love when they're on my feed. Focuses on more niche rpgs I would never have other wise have heard off, even more so that the other 2.

Hope y'all check these guys out, maybe check out a a new RPG!

Here are links to all the channels:

Dicebreaker:

dicebreaker.com

https://youtube.com/@dicebreaker

Dave Thaumavore: https://youtube.com/@DaveThaumavore

Goblinmixtape: https://www.tiktok.com/@goblinmixtape?_t=8Z5qX2dvFPy&_r=1

#wotc #ogl #fuck the new ogl #dicebreaker #goblinmixtape #Dave Thaumavore #rpg #indie rpg #maybe all these guys are obvious but I didnt know about them till like the last few months

[ratwavegamehouse]

Hey hey Dicebreaker did an article covering my new release, Old Gods and Young Guns; a system agnostic setting guide for a space fantasy western world inspired by Jack Kirby, Outer Worlds and Star Wars.

Read the article here:

And get the game digitally here: https://ratwavegamehouse.itch.io/old-gods-and-young-guns-setting-guide

#game design #ttrpg #indie ttrpg #old gods and young guns #space western #dicebreaker

[thatbiologist]

Storybreakers S1E1 - New Interns Gain Perspective, Lose Lunch

#youtube #dicebreaker #oxventure

[xtremeservers]

Dicebreaker Recommends is a series of m... https://www.xtremeservers.com/blog/dicebreaker-recommends-detective-club-the-most-creative-lying-experience-youll-ever-have/?feed_id=40514&_unique_id=63535160ca852&Dicebreaker%20Recommends%3A%20Detective%20Club%2C%20the%20most%20creative%20lying%20experience%20you%27ll%20ever%20have

#NewReleases #Nintendo #Dicebreaker #Recommends #series

[sybersepticeye]

hes insane

#markiplier #distractible #episode was dicebreakers #my screenshots

[rightintoalake]

andy only won 3 of the 4 rounds of jackbox, what a scrub!

#oxboxtra #where did he get so good at trivia #like when he played monikers with eurogamer and dicebreaker

[imsobadatnicknames2]

I think your RPG takes are really good :) I enjoy D&D 5e to some extent (like, it's fine), but I feel D&D's market dominance isn't great. But what gets me the most is how incurious many people who play D&D 5e to the exclusion of other games are. No interest in seeing anything that deviates from how D&D does things.

Yeah! This is a point I've tried to make clear too, like... ultimately if someone WANTS to stick to 5e that's not my problem. If they want to use heavily homebrewed 5e for a Doctor Who or Cyberpunk or Homestuck campaign or whatever and their table has fun with it like. Okay, I personally wouldn't do that but I also have no right to tell anyone to NOT do that.

But the moment they get so entrenched in that idea of "You can use 5e to do ANYTHING" that they start acting like someone else wanting to use anything other than heavily homebrewed 5e for anything is some ridiculous or preposterous idea that's when I have a problem with them. Especially when the people who think like that are a statistically significant enough portion of the tabletop public to affect business decisions in the hobby.

Like. One of the saddest cases I've seen in recent memory, the upcoming Adventure Time ttrpg from Cryptozoic was initially pitched as having its own system, only to later end up being switched to 5e. And considering that the initial Dicebreaker article that came out months before this announcement featured quotes from one of the developers about why they decided to use their own system and why they thought D&D wouldn't work well with the narrative flow they wanted for the game, and also that the reason given for the switch to 5e was "feedback from fans", it's clear that this is not a decision they made because they WANTED to make a 5e hack, but because they NEEDED to make it a 5e hack in order for it to be profitable because there's just such a huge portion of the tabletop public that got pulled into the hobby with 5e and is so fundamentally incurious that they won't touch a book with a 10-foot pole unless it some form of "5e compatible" logo on the cover.

#ttrpg

[kyberbonsai]

I've said it on Twitter but no one follows me there so I'll scream in the void here as well ✨

If you are a Dimension 20 Burrow's End TM enjoyer and particularly if you love Jasper's performance as Thorn (and honestly, who wouldn't), do me a favour and go listen to Three Black Halflings, the ttrpg podcast hosted by Jasper along with Jeremy Cobb and Olivia Kennedy (but you can call her Liv!). Just trust me on this one, I need more people to get into 3BH immediately, they are amazing!

Their episodes are very varied, with one of the main focus being diversity in d&d/ttrpgs on all fronts. They are some of the most fun, insightful and creative people in this space! They have important, deep conversations with many incredibly talented folks, with an attention to inclusion of a diverse array of creators from minorities and marginalized backgrounds. They have multiple awesome campaigns that will make you cry and laugh at once (and you'll get more of Jasper's incredible roleplay, along with so many talented guests (Emily included, she's a guest for a few episodes on Outlaw and Obelisks, their post-apocalyptic western inspired campaign)). They try out different systems and new ttrpgs, but also discuss d&d with class dives and news episodes.

They have interviews with many people: to mention a few from d20 we're talking Bennan, Lou, Murph, Emily, Zac, Ify, Carlos, Gabe, Erika, Persephone, B.Dave, Krystina, Amy, Matt and Aabria at various times, but also people from the rest of Naddpod, Transplanar RPG, Oxventure, Dicebreaker and other cool spaces!

Not strictly related, but Jasper was also the first (and only, I think?) guest DM on Naddpod, I think his Potcedonia two-shot is some of the most fun content out there!

I need to see more of them in this space, as well as more fanart of their campaigns, so I need everyone to listen to their podcast. Here's a link to their Spotify! https://spotify.link/gXVjcTIm2Db

#three black halflings #3BH #I think they should be known and appreciated by everyone #dimension 20 #Burrow's End #Thorn Vale #d20

[cassimothwin]

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!

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #game design #ttrpg designer #indie ttrpg designer #tabletop role playing games

[demonicarcane]

#critical role #the mighty nein #mollymauk tealeaf #mollymauk origins #dark horse comics #mollymauk origins spoilers #spoilers #comic spoilers

[utilitycaster]

@rowzeoli replied to your post “@rowzeoli replied to your post “Do you think part...”:

There's a lot to tackle on this so I'll do my best to cover it all! So I totally get where you're coming from and to be fair yes there are some things in old articles that I don't agree with any more in deeming people having done things "first" which is part of the issue of not having a collective historical memory around actual play as it moves so quickly. Most of the issue isn't that readership is down it's that AI and venture capitalism is destroying journalism

​

Hey, sorry for taking a bit to respond; it's been a hectic week and I wanted to give it some thought and time.

I'll start off with the good: I really do, again, appreciate you engaging here, and on the strength of that alone I am going to at least give Rascal's free articles a good solid chance for a while; I have been, admittedly, tarring it with the brush of a lot of frustrations (see below) and I know it's relatively new and still finding its place and should get a bit more of my patience. I also should note that while your article did hit on a lot of the patterns that have turned me - and no small amount of others - off of a lot of AP/TTRPG journalism it is by no means the worst example. The things you credited Burrow's End for are, admittedly, more obscure single-episode events within a huge body of work. Or in other words: there are bylines in the space that make me go "oh this is going to be bad" and yours is not one of them.

With that said: I'm sorry, but Polygon's bias is not a matter of time crunch or lack of funding. There is no way that a time crunch or lack of funding would consistently, over years (this was already word on the street at latest when EXU Calamity came out almost 2 years ago) result in a message of "D20 can do no wrong, and Critical Role rarely does right." If it were throwing out harsh criticism or glowing praise for a wide variety of shows, sure, that seems like it could come from not having a lot of time...but this goes beyond coincidence. It's a reputation that long precedes your entry into the field. As some others in the replies have noted, I might have written the most about it on Tumblr, but it's at this point not an uncommon observation. This also isn't an issue for other publications in a similar "nerd stuff" space - there's plenty of articles on, say, Dicebreaker or Comicbook.com that I don't care for, either because I disagree with the opinion or I think the analysis isn't really worthwhile, but those tend to at least have a mix of positive and critical articles about most shows. When I said you could treat Polygon articles like Madlibs, I meant it. And so I think it's great that you are no longer chasing "groundbreaking", for example, is not a solid ground for an article, but this also is showing me that even relatively new journalists are, very early on, starting with this exact formula. In some ways, that's more damning.

I do also want to add that I'm again, sympathetic to the lack of resources and to coming into a field with passionate and nitpicky fans who have been here for years. Not knowing about a single Critical Role one-shot from 2018 is something that I'd have been much more lenient about if it weren't hitting those repetitive notes of "D20 is great/this thing is groundbreaking/look at the production values." But the other article I posted, also from Polygon but not written by you, is, to be honest, pretty inexcusable. I get there's a lot of lost institutional memory...but either being unaware of, or ignoring the fact that there are a huge number of long-running actual play podcasts that play longform campaigns? That's pretty much on par, in terms of whether your audience trusts you, of the New York Times international news desk not being able to locate Russia on a map (though obviously with far less serious real-world ramifications). (The fact that this was written by a prominent actual play scholar meanwhile is like, I don't know, Neil DeGrasse Tyson not knowing how gravity works, but that's a separate topic).

And again, I get these are your colleagues. I have the luxury of being able to run my mouth without putting my livelihood at stake, and that's not true for people within the industry. I do not expect you to say anything ill about them, nor would I judge any specific individual for getting published in Polygon since I get that people are pitching to a number of sites so that they can get paid! But when I say "Polygon's AP/TTRPG coverage is at needs-a-change-of-leadership levels of bad" I am not alone in this, and it's something that has probably been true for easily 3+ years if not longer. Because it's one of the more prominent publications in the space (ironically, due to Justin McElroy of TAZ being a founder, and the fact that its videogame division is quite good and has had some viral videos, it had enviable name recognition among AP fans that it's only squandered since) it really is at a point where hitting that same formula in any AP journalism - claiming everything is groundbreaking, putting an emphasis on high production values, D20 good and CR bad - makes fans go "oh, more of this bullshit." I don't want to say you can't talk about these things - I definitely do not want to say that you cannot criticize Critical Role - but that specific well is has been poisoned for a long time. If someone hits these points it feels, whether or not it is true, that they're trying to be provocative by going against popular fan opinion, but are simultaneously just saying the same thing we've seen a million times before.

I believe wholeheartedly that from your perspective the competition is AI - and I don't want AI articles either. On the other hand, in terms of what I think fans who are in my position are turning to, it's not AI articles (I'm certainly not). If I want analysis, I'm probably, at this point, going to social media; I am not the only person who writes longform meta or analysis for fun, and I'll seek others who do out. I'm not personally a video essay person, but plenty are, and that's out there too. I'm not going there for reporting on news (I think the Dnd Shorts OGL debacle made it clear that actual journalists are very necessary) but yeah, if I want criticism or analysis? I'm going there instead, especially since there often is that missing institutional memory. If I do want journalism, at this point, some of the bigger shows are getting writeups in less niche publications, particularly Critical Role and D20, as is news of more major tabletop games. It's infrequent and it doesn't highlight indie works, but it tends to be, if nothing else, lacking in major errors or obvious bias. If I want to hear from cast members, at least four of the shows I watch or listen to have regular talkback shows, and Dropout regularly talks to AP/TTRPG figures on Adventuring Academy, and a lot of those shows take viewer questions. Which, again, probably not heartening to hear the competition is even tighter, but I guess my point is I hope it's possible, even with very limited resources, to move away from the above "novelty and production values above all" pattern because even that would do a lot of needed work to rebuild reader trust - and I'm going to be checking out Rascal in the hopes that it can.

#rowzeoli #long post