#game crit

[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

[quincywillows]

like i remember the vitriol that came out when the mere PREMISE for ballad of songbirds and snakes came out bc it was “about the villain” and wasn’t instead a novella of one of the many cute likeable faves of the masses. i remember how fast people were to tear down the book before it even came out (and still do now). and it’s like look, i get it, suzanne created so many interesting characters that it would be incredible to learn more about and get more content for. but her choosing to write about snow for a prequel isn’t like Romanticizing The Villain or whatever bullshit y’all are claiming as hot takes on twitter -- ballad fits right into the common themes and tone of the series in that its not a romanticization but a reflection on how snow became what we know him as in the original series. both in how he already had some less than charming or healthy traits (just like katniss does -- suzanne is always clear that people are not inherently good nor evil and parallels were drawn between how snow and katniss view the world and think strategically, etc, from the second book), but also in how society and the choices of the greater community in panem created snow. like ballad is a really interesting piece of lore and history and worldbuilding for an already rich and elaborate setting that suzanne created, allowing us to see how that world even came to be and the kind of toxic impact it had on the people surviving in it while still pointing out that those people are human and that everyone has humanity and yet can still cause unfathomable harm to one another based on circumstance and need to survive and pressures of all kinds and like i have lost the plot here now but suzanne is one of the best authors of our time who actually gives a shit about creating layered, nuanced characters and worlds rather than black and white good and evil and unfortunately the hyperpolarization of our hot takes social media culture nowadays just can’t handle her anymore. suzanne im so sorry we don’t deserve your storytelling. anyway i’ll be seated for this movie y’all can skip and keep giving lukewarm takes on twitter to make urself seem so smart for hating a book you probably didnt even actually read

#suzanne collins is one of the only mainstream authors these days who clearly writes for purpose rather than profit #and puts thought into her writing always 100% of the time. but we as a regressing online society are not ready for her anymore #people are so scared of nuance in their media its incredible (derogatory) #the hunger games #ballad of songbirds and snakes #maggie.txt #fandom crit #to the people who are actually looking forward to this film + enjoyed the book i respect YOU

[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

[shmaba]

So I hear people really liked those speed paints during the Daggerheart one shot break

#critical role #daggerheart #critical role art #daggerheart art #dante #kexon #xarlo #oppy #sweetpea #pango #bunnie #art #my art #ttrpg #tabletop games #crit role #illustration #speed paint #Youtube

[probablybadrpgideas]

Implement the Fuck Rule.

If you say your action with the fuck intensifier ("I'll fucking kill those goblins", "I'll sneak in like the fucking wind", "I'll broker the most fucking evenhanded peace treaty these equally valid fuckheads have ever fucking seen"), then the result is always either a critical success or critical failure.

#rpg #roleplaying games #Generic #meta #game idea #I do like the idea of a game where you can only crit fail or crit succeed #Maybe I should try it #“Gonna hit these fucks with so much love and fucking respect they won't know what fucking hit them.”

[i-need-itlives-prequel]

Jester is so. Babygirl

#darkest dungeon #dd leper #dd jester #guh i included the wrong in game screenshot. the original is supposed to be one with jester saying #'incredible. you hit one. finally' #after leper got a crit hit #i'll change it later

[mishapen-dear]

tbh i think that even unwinnable fights should be winnable. some of the BEST fights i've ever run as a dm were ones i built kill the players (in a fun way. I had some cutscenes prepped so even the loss would be a different flavour of win)- but then they were clever bastards and managed to either win the fights or pull themselves out of trouble. I think it's perfectly fine to plan for a fight that players aren't supposed to win, but you need to let them. if they can't win, they can't lose, and the meaning of that encounter is diminished. do that too many times, and they stop trusting you to give them roleplay prompts and start expecting to sit there waiting while you drive the story for them.

but if they can win... if there is always the chance to win, no matter how impossible the odds, then they ALWAYS have hope. they always get invested. they feel the big emotions of success or the big emotions of failure, and you fucking Win as a dm/roleplay prompter/lead bastard.

#qsmp neg #qsmp crit #discourse #<- for blacklists #im not grumping or anything im just musing on like. the mechanics of why everyone is so upset about the latest fight #and how it can be avoided while still keeping these fights genuinely difficult and intense #its hard because there's so many players and they all have wildly different strengths and weaknesses #so someone who could take on the code easy needs that enemy scaled differently than someone who isn't a big fighter #but it's hard to do that in a world where they interact w the same enemy #and you only have so much man-power to cater to a big server like this one #and then you bring in the big powerful items that the players can and can't access but which the admins have ultimate power over #and the fact that some of the admins themselves have lag issues or aren't super great at pvp so they accommodate that with better gear #and it starts getting messy #but for the fights themselves yeah regardless of what armour or gear or killing-methods they use there should Always be a win condition #and idk maybe there was one and we just didn't get to see it #but if that win condition is 'parents sit in the safe room with their babies while the others are overrun' #then i think there are ways to build better win conditions #anyway i love game design and player/dm interactions qsmp hire me now i want to know your behind the scenes #jk im too busy to apply #but man. i wanna nerd out so bad that sometimes i think about it

[cant-say-tomorrow-day]

we need a Make Some Noise episode with Brennan, Aabria, and Matt Mercer, and all of the prompts are world building related or they're D20 + Crit Role references

#make some noise #game changer #dropout #brennan lee mulligan #aabria iyengar #matt mercer #matthew mercer #d20 #dimension 20 #crit role #critical role #sam reich

[ria-the-camel]

Hey Matt?? What does this mean?

#critical role spoilers #cr spoilers #crit role #critical role #bells hells #imogen temult #pate de rolo #ashton greymoore #whatever gentle repose stopped scares me more #this is probably just a way of saying that yeah. they can still bring her back #but in game? it feels like there’s something we’re missing #my art #cr3

[brianjamur]

After all these years, i finally drew a fanart of my number one Hades waifu, Artemis in her Hades II design!!! (Well, technically number two since Dusa will always be number one in my heart) Alright, at first i liked this design very much despite of what anyone else said about it, but now, i kinda get why some people prefer the first one, but eh, i still love her anyway!

#illustration #fanart #artist #digital artist #drawing #イラスト #ファンアート #hades game #hades #hades supergiant #hades 2 #artemis #artemis hades #crit build all the way #artist on tumblr #artists on tumblr

[svtskneecaps]

(everyone arguing on call about what the purgatory event eggs mean)

bagi: YOU'RE BEING DUMB!! YOU'RE BEING STUPID!!!

roier: HOLY SHIT NO MAMES

cellbit: ok listen up-

bagi: NONONONONO, YOU'RE MY FUCKING BROTHER AND YOU'RE SAYING STUPID STUFF, I WON'T ALLOW THAT

philza: YOU GUYS ARE FUCKING SIBLINGS?????????

#qsmp #qsmp purgatory #THEY FULLY DID NOT ACKNOWLEDGE IT TOO THEY JUST KEPT TALKING LMFAO #BAGI AND CELLBIT JUST KEPT TRUCKING LMFAOOOOO #qsmp vodblogging #FOOLISH LITERALLY REPEAT JUMP CRITTING THE BOLAS EGG JUST TO SEE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN #i missed this part live bc i had a meeting #this is so fucking funny #PFFFFF HE STARTED SCOLDING CHAT #'IT'S NOT DOING ANY DAMAGE GUYS LOOK AT ITS HEALTH AT THE TOP!!!!!' #shut up vic #block game brainrot #edit: SORRY GUYS I STILL DON'T KNOW HOW TO CLIP OR I'D BE INCLUDING THEM #if i keep quoting shit maybe i'll do some shitty screen recordings and see how that works #otherwise i'll try to be better about leaving time stamps in the tags lol my bad #it's in the notes for this one

[latenitewaffles]

#hades game #hades supergiant #hades #hades 2 #personally i love artemis the crits are just so good #ares is a close second

[theslowmaxx]

Guess I’ll die then 😀🎲

#art #illustration #artists on tumblr #fanart #artblr #gaming #rpg #dnd #dungeons and dragons #d20 #crit fail

[phatcatphergus]

LOVE putting game mechanics into rp. Phil shot down tubbo saying the eyeballs had no armour but... It's relevent to battle strategy? Plus in rp that means they've been bio buffed to be stronger through possession somehow?

EXACTLYYYYYYY

It genuinely irks me how often Tubbo gets shut down for mentioning very obvious game mechanics that could VERY EASILY BE INCORPORATED!!

The biggest problem I have is when people shut him down from meta-commentary or overall analysis of the lore or game and then say he's fail rp-ing when it's very obvious he isn't in character at that point! Even canon-compliant comments are taken as meta or fail rp just because he's more knowledgable than other people! The armor things absolutely could have been canon-compliant but people would rather call him stupid and a metagame then acknowledge plot holes or go off course from their picture-perfect storyline.

Game mechanics could be so cool incorporated into the lore and the overall storyline but people have such insane standards and expectations for lore and rp and anyone who deviates from their perfect idea of lore is fail rp and a metagamer.

#its literally a video game and should be treated as such #just because hes smart doesnt mean hes fail rp-ing #qsmp tubbo #qsmp fandom crit #anon asks

[shmaba]

More art I've been making for Daggerheart is being shared through "Daggeheart Drops". Small additional information and art for various items, adversaries, and encounters that are going to be periodically released over time while the game is in development!

This Daggerhear Drop is for the Flickerfly. An insectoid adversary that has razor sharp wings that are often used in the creation of special weaponry.

Get the full information and stat blocks for both the Adult and Juvenile Flickerfly on the Daggerheart Blog

#daggerheart #daggerheart art #daggerheart drop #darrington press #critical role #crit role #ttrpg #tabletop games #art #concept art #my art #illustration #creature design #dragon #sword

[falllpoutboy]

book percy looking at his movies and his show knowing they are 0-2 in adapting his story

#disclaimer: ​i dont hate the show. i just think it’s aggressively mid and has misinterpreted the themes of pjo #its all fun and games until you realize his 3 biggest opps (harry potter thg and twilight) all got relatively accurate adaptations #pjo show crit #pjo/hoo #gif ref