#no better time to leave wotc and try indie creators' games.

[fiovske]

Do you have any recs for other non-DnD game systems? I've only ever played 5e, and I'm a little intimidated to get into other systems, but I also want to branch out and get away from WOTC's bullshit.

Sure thing! I am also including a link to the itch.io pages since that's where i get most of these games!

Blades In The Dark: i'm mentioning this first bc the rules are very easy to grasp and if you're looking for a setting that has a touch of ghosts and steampunk, this game is the perfect gateway to that! it's the best for a heist i have found and the game mechanics and names are so soo sick here's just a slice from their itch.io page:

personally i find the setting and the stress mechanic very cool, because it takes into account the mental toil that an action can have and i find games with inbuilt consequence mechanics very compelling! it introduced the concept of clocks to me and i am obsessed.

a) adjacent to Blades, are all Forged In The Dark Games which are third-party blades games, and the most notable of them is Scum and Villiany which is space-western setting and also my favorite and if you're looking to play a game in the breadth of star-wars like interplanetary politics and everything, i highly recommend this game! b) if you're looking for a Blades game with mechanics to suit something more royalty-adjacent, with court-politics and agendas and masquerade parties and all, like say d20's court of fey and flowers vibe then i recommend Court Of Blades! I havent gotten around to playing this yet but it looks really promising and i soo badly want to play a game in this setting!

2. The Ground Itself : this is a world-building game. focused on one single place over time and how it changes and how it's people change, the events of this game can be spaced out from a week to several millennia depending on the rolls of ur dice or your choices! i have found that this game serves very well as say, a session zero game also, for setting up a place before you play in it, and not only a very fun session of making a place together for your party to play in, but also not leaving all the work to the gm! so it's a win win situation!

tbh, all games by everest pipkin are very good! i wanna get my hands on world ending game as well bc it is a game about giving your campaign, your world-building and your characters the perfect send-off.

3. Wanderhome : if you're looking for something ghibli-esque (this is the closest i can come to defining this game thru popular media) then i highly recommend wanderhome! it's got a very cozy pastoral vibe to it and the art is really beautiful and you get to pick from a range of animal-folk to play as it's very cool!

also honorable mentions,

a) Sleepaway is a game by the same creator in which ur a camp counsellor to a bunch of misfits and horror stories around campfires ensue! b) Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast which is an upcoming game which you can still back and it looks really interesting so i'd recommend checking it out as well!

4. Lancer: this game has mechs it has space-battles and you get to be a pilot in a future set years in the future and a thousand directions to take ur campaign in! he relationship between pilot and mech is smth that can be so personal.....

i wanna play lancer sometime it has very cool mech designs and it has very much piqued my interest, if i find ppl who wanna play lancer w me im 🏃🏃!

5. Heart The City Beneath : honestly, one of my fave settings of all time, it has strong horror components so mind the cws! but the classes and the game mechanics are very intuitive and overall it helps you not only build a character that feels natural and organic, but since this is a horror setting, things do not have happy endings... however it will ensure that your characters have a well-built journey whose ends will be terrifying and magnificent.

I got introduced to the fallout mechanic through this game and oooo how i love it, it's the perfect blend of your actions have consequences + every consequence is interesting and will affect your character deeply and emotionally, which is <33

this list got too long so i will just mention some more here:

the quiet year (very good map-making game, for before the frost shepherds arrive in winter.)

beam saber (forged in the dark game that deserves its on mention! austin ramsey's games i highly recommend!)

thirsty sword lesbians (ecactly what it says on the tin, i wanna check this game out also)

lotr's one ring rpg (this one is the closest substitute to classic d&d bc lets be real. tolkien is where d&d got it's shit from. and i have heard good things abt this game even tho i've never had the chance to play it)

mothership rpg (space horror whose build mechanics are very easy and user-friendly and i've had a LOT of fun with this!)

orbital (one very beautifully written rpg about life in space and it's only 32 pages but well-worth the time, highly recommend)

that's all i can give off the top of my head, i might've missed a few but these are strong standouts, so i hope u find at least one to your liking!

#ttrpg recomendations #not dnd #blades in the dark #forged in the dark #the ground itself #wanderhome #lancer #heart the city beneath #the quiet year #beam saber #thirsty sword lesbians #one ring rpg #mothership rpg #orbital #ttrpg #long post #genuinely recommending this to everyone. #d&d is a very good jumping off platform and w everything happening right now... #no better time to leave wotc and try indie creators' games.

[bubblewrapjunkie]

Reading that Polygon article about the Critical Role kickstarter and I am hashtag tired. For the record, I think the whole premise of the article is shaky at best, but if we are to take the critique presented at face value, then I have some counter points, seeing as it seems they have a lot of Opinions™ about how Critical Role (who has existed as a fully independent enterprise for all of, like, a month since they moved the main show off the G&S stream to their own channel) operates.

1) If anyone is to be critiqued about the cast being white, why isn’t it Felicia Day and Geek & Sundry? They were the ones who “hired” the cast in the first place. Shouldn’t they have insisted on a more diverse cast when they took on The Critical Role team? Shouldn’t they have broken this private friend group up and held auditions to find a Token Black Friend to begin with?

2) Why isn’t Polygon critiquing TAZ, a dnd podcast that features TWO OF THEIR FOUNDERS, with a party consisting of four straight white men and zero women, PoC or members of the lgbtq community (CR checks two of those boxes, but who’s counting)? I mean, since personal relationships prestream are clearly irrelevant, who fucking cares that this was a family activity meant to tighten their bond and do something fun together that happened to take off? Where is the representation?? (clearly, the representation in the actual gameplay is also irrelevant since the article doesn’t mention any of it in regards to the Critical Role campaign - so sorry to anyone who feels represented by, let’s say Taako or Lup for instance - you are actually Wrong™).

3) Why is Polygon equating a kickstarter for an animated show based on original characters with kickstarters for ttrpg’s? Do they also equate rowboats and sawmills? They both need wood at some point...?

4) Why wasn’t Polygon critiquing the former kickstarter champion MST3K for their lack of cast diversity when they got funded? Surely that kickstarter was pulling focus and funds from smaller shows too? Or some indie game featuring robots, which clearly suffered because there is only so much money people will spend on robot-related media, and all of that media is the same. There is also no way a person can be a supporter of multiple things, fyi. 

5) Why aren’t we demanding that any band consisting of friends who are only men/straight people/white people start replacing members or adding new ones once they make it big? They have money now! They are in the spotlight! Why doesn’t Arctic Monkeys replace Alex Turner with a black trans woman? Why is no one taking their responsibility???

6) Why aren’t Polygon critiquing The Try Guys for still being four dudes after leaving Buzzfeed? They are in control now! They have their own company! Why haven’t they kicked Ned and Keith out and replaced them with FEEEMAAAALLLEEEESSS? What’s with this obsession with “friends before it became a corporation”? WHY ARE ALL OF THESE ENTITIES STILL NOT WOKE???

7) Does the writer of the article share the fee he was paid to write it with the developers of whatever word processor he uses to write it? I mean, I can only assume so, since he thinks that CR should share their kickstarter funds with (their sponsor)  WoTC???

All ranting aside, I don’t claim that Critical Role is without its faults, and the goal should always be to do better. The cast is (depending on your views on Judaism and ethnicity and I am goyim and not touching that with a ten foot pole) all white. And the conversation that this article could have opened up is an important one. But it falls apart because the piece is so sorely lacking in nuance and seems very poorly researched overall, but especially in regards to how the CR cast handle their “lack of diversity”. There is no mention anywhere of any of the PoC who have guested on the show or of the overall narratives in the stories or characters presented. This is written in bad faith and thus it derails the conversation completely.

In due time my hope is for a secondary campaign with a more diverse cast, but it currently seems like people have conflated CR having a successful kickstarter with CR being a full fledged million dollar multimedia conglomerate with endless resources. Lest we forget, this is also a crew in which all of the main players HAVE OTHER JOBS and very limited time - so until they’ve firmly found their ground as an independent company it might be a bit premature to demand that they hire a bunch of new content creators on the spot. Hopefully they can (and should) soon, but fuck me if they aren’t getting really harshly scrutinized in comparison to a lot of companies doing a lot less to try and represent diversity to the best of their abilities.    

#Critical Role #CR kickstarter #I am tired