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#tabletop rpg stuff
stoutstoatpress · 5 months
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VAST Guides are here!
By using VAST, you can learn how to add accessibility tags for screen readers to your PDFs, by using Adobe InDesign and Adobe Acrobat.
I'm super excited to release a brand new publishing community resource: VAST (or Visual Accessibility Skills Toolkit).
>> WWW.VAST.GUIDE <<
VAST is a collection of short articles aiming to spread awareness about what visual impairments are, and how folks in the small press industry can accommodate them.
The guides are split into four sections:
Visual Impairment 101 explores what visual impairments are, how visually impaired people navigate digital content, and introduces some current language and definitions (circa 2023).
Screen reading PDFs explores the basics of how screen readers navigate through digital content. Includes video examples!
Using InDesign introduces different tools that designers can use to make their documents more accessible.
Putting Into Practice presents case studies of common structures in roleplaying games, and how they could be given accessibility tags using tools covered in section 3. (Coming soon!)
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VAST was developed by Brian Tyrrell (me!), and disability advocate and accessibility consultant Yubi Coates. Visually impaired consultants and InDesign experts were brought in to corroborate the guides.
All of the information in the guides is up to date, and we’re committed to reviewing and updating the guides in 2024 and 2025.
This project was completed using a small pot of funding provided by Creative Scotland’s Create: Inclusion program in 2022.
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zhjake · 10 months
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finally getting around to posting the art that I did for the Lancer project Ironleaf Foundry
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arsene-inc · 7 months
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I want to share this mad idea a french ttrpg designer had.
A system of rules to speedrun campaigns and scenarios.
Warning : the table MUST have played it normally before. These rules are for giving a second life to these campaign books catching dust in your library
These rules are an add-on to the system you used for the campaign. Now you can Bunny hop, glitch, clip, go out of bonds in your game. Bugs can appear. Suddenly the game is in another language, good luck to the players who don't speak it.
You can add little challenges, the same as video game speedrun. Like an all boss run, a no hit run, a non lethal run, etc.
Honestly I found the idea bonkers. I want to try it, seems like a good idea for a crazy game night.
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losttrailsmaps · 2 months
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Dark Iron Mountains
Hi everyone, welcome to another map pack, which features 15 total maps including Mountain Passes, Ruins, Villages, Paths and more!
You can check out the entire map pack here.
Here are some quest ideas to go along with these maps:
The local baker's prized recipe book has been stolen by mischievous mountain goats known for their taste for paper.
Villagers from a nearby settlement speak of strange lights flickering atop the highest peak of the Dark Iron Mountains, accompanied by eerie howls in the night.
A reclusive sorcerer is said to reside within a hidden enclave nestled amidst the crags of the Dark Iron Mountains
A series of disturbing dreams plague the sleep of those who venture into the Dark Iron Mountains, each dream more haunting than the last.
My Entire Map Collection.
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kamabr · 1 year
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have you considered… Goncharov (1973) the ttrpg?
download the one-page rpg for free here!
You are the characters in one of the many fabled extended and unreleased cuts of GONCHAROV (1973), the greatest mafia movie ever made, and winter has come to Naples, Italy…
Get your cast of players together to tell your own tale of drama and crime, passion and longing, and maybe just a little bit of humanity. Make your fortune, claim your city, then face your hubris—and give yourself a cinematic final act.
In the end, sometimes death is what makes one immortal.
Perhaps the rise was the fall, after all…
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goblincow · 1 month
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Rascal News is well worth your money:
Well it's been a month. I waited and watched and thought ah you know if the lowest sub was less than $5 then maybe just maybe. But I did want to support because Rascal is setting a course for the direction TTRPGs as an arts industry can be steered in, whether I personally am on board or not (though my funds would certainly help).
Like I said, it's been a month, and they've now implemented pay-per-article if there's something you want to see or you can't justify $5 – which is a pretty smart move considering "paywall tho" is the thought terminating refrain in the twitter replies and one of Rascal's stated intents is to do more Real Important Journalism in an industry rife with corporate exploitation and abuses of power, which is the sort of news that needs both funding and low access to entry.
It's also worth saying that their articles are a good read.
"While there are still some crunchier elements to the final product (exemplifying what AP scholar Dr. Emily Friedman refers to as the medium’s “ambitious middle”), the subtle production details and the highly intentional performances in GUDIYA are a beacon of what is artistically possible for video-born actual plays."
"GUDIYA (the Hindi word for doll) overwhelmingly plays into the horror of not only its source material, but the horror of being both a woman and South Asian in the highly gendered and xenophobic world of the English Empire."
I've now signed up at $50 for the year, or £3.29 each month which is Really Quite Good, so for your consideration I wanted to share the article that made me commit (above) plus a couple of choice picks for tumblr:
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nebmia · 1 year
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When people talk about Blades in the Dark they usually bring up a few big headline mechanics (flashbacks, clocks, load, position/effect etc) and they should because they are really good mechanics. But there are a lot of little things in blades that I think are really important for creating the whole experience and in some cases not all though) are unusual in ttrpgs. SO I thought I'd list some them.
You can't leave:
The 'standard' (but not universal) mode for ttrpgs is 'the adventure' where you travel from place to place seeing new stuff, meeting different people, looting new ruins, solving new problems etc. There might be a hub that you often return to but generally roving about is a core element. And its obvious why this is appealing! But it has two downsides: 1) the players can very easily run away from the consequences of their actions and 2) and the players are constantly being faced with new stuff that they don't really have the hooks to latch onto yet.
In contrast Doskvol is a pressure cooker. Want to leave? Tough! the whole world out there is dead and will kill you. Everything you do will create more characters and plot hooks and conflicts all ready to be pulled into the narrative at any point. If you piss off another faction you can't just skip town, you have to face up to the consequences of your actions. And as you play the players will become more and more immersed in the city and develop a deep understanding of what it going on there.
2. You're a gang of criminals:
A common (again, not universal) base assumption of many games is that you are good guys doing fundamentally heroic things. And this tends to encourage a somewhat reactionary style of play where you are presented with a bad thing that is happening and then attempt to resolve it. In contrast being criminals is a much more proactive endeavor. There isn't a clear threat that needs to be overcome. There's just a situation and its up to you to get what you want out of it.
The scope of play available when you are playing as scoundrels rather than heros is also so much wider. Note you aren't evil, which is equally restrictive. You will do good things and bad things, and struggle so much more with the question of when you can afford to be good and just how bad you are willing to be. You don't just always step up to save the world but instead pursue the things that actually matter to your character, because being a criminal allows your character to be selfish in a way a hero can't be and that massively helps in creating a player driven game.
But you aren't just criminals, you're a gang of criminals, with shared goals and resources and a character sheet to go with it. This really forges a group identity that transcends what is possible in the traditional party (which is essentially just a group of individuals who happen to be in the same place). The crew gives everyone at the table a clear basic goal: build your crew; expand your crime empire. And this is a fundamentally player driven goal! Normally systems reserve this sort of 'domain level' play for high level characters (ie the ones most people never play) but blades puts you there right from the off.
3. Experience:
At the end of each session you go round the table and discuss instances of when each player 'addressed a challenge with [core activities of their playbook]', 'expressed their beliefs, drives, heritage, or background', or 'You struggled with issues from their vice or traumas during the session'. This is incredibly lightweight but also very effective.
Firstly it means everyone at the table is always going to be thinking about and making space for expression of their character and creating problems which is something that can easily be sidelined in favor of optimally addressing the challenges you are facing when there isn't this codified incentive.
And secondly the fact that it is at the end of the session creates this great debrief situation where you go over the highlights of the session and maybe dig a little deeper into why your character acted in the ways they did, which just brings the whole table into having a deeper understanding of each others characters. Again, notice 'drives' as a potential XP trigger. The game rewards (and therefore encourages) motivated characters.
In addition of personal XP you also have crew XP with a similar set of triggers (goals and drives come up again), which really supports building a crew identity, encouraging the crew to be proactive, and centering it as 'the main character' of the game.
4. Rivals:
The concept of rivals only gets a few words in the Blades rules. It appears on each playbook with a list of potential rivals (Just a name and a couple of words of description each) and then again it appears on when you are setting up a scenario in a sentence saying 'Are any enemies or rivals interfering in the operation?' That's barely enough to call it a mechanic. But its incredibly effective! You automatically get a small cast of revolving antagonists, each with some personal connection to a player character, who just keep popping up and causing problems. And 'oh shit, not this guy again! I hate this guy!' is a really great way to tie things together and get players invested in what's going on.
5. Just enough world building:
Blades gives you quite a lot of material to work with on the world of Doskvol. Certainly enough to build out the broad picture. But it is also absolutely chock full of (deliberate) gaps. What this leaves is for you to fill in the gaps to create your version of Doskvol (And it can be quite fun to compare notes with other groups playing blades). The book tells you there is a conspiracy in a faction but it won't tell you who's behind it. The book tells you people are gathering ancient artifacts, but it won't tell you where they come from or what exactly they do. And this means that you can easily set the answer to be whatever would be appropriate for your game. Or even discover the answer through playing!
The book being full of prompts but largely devoid of answers is a very useful tool for the somewhat free form, improvisational style of the game because there will always be things to inspire you but you never need to worry and pausing the game to check what the official stance on something is.
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In general I think the sort of thing I have been talking about is something blades excels at: really lightweight elements that end up having significant impact. A final example of that is the trauma system, which is essentially two sentences long:
If you get too much stress you get a trauma ( one of: cold, haunted, obsessed, paranoid, reckless, soft, unstable, viscous). If you struggled with issues from your trauma this session, gain an xp.
And from that very simple mechanic flows characterisation, character development, and the players deliberately creating more problems for themselves!
Anyway, that's what comes to mind at the moment. I'll add more stuff if I think of it.
You should play Blades in the Dark, its very good.
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inficetegodwottery · 9 months
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So. Werewolf 5th Edition.
Werewolf 5th edition sucks. A lot.
Edit- I made some errors in my initial edit of this post that were fuelled entirely by being underinformed and almost insensible with anger, disappointment, and anxiety.
Some very informative responses have been made that I intend to incorporate into a much better and less rambling post with those updates and corrections. I'll probably delete this one soon as I type that one together, so folks only see the updated version.
Sorry for any mistakes I made on this old version, again, I was in an extremely poor place mentally and thoroughly dispirited by the total butchering of what was supposed to be a less shitty and mean-spirited version of a setting I care deeply for despite its foundational flaws and 30+ year history of exactly this thing happening.
I'm still very, very angry. But it's important to be angry and correct. This post was not made by someone informed of all the facts, and I intend to correct that.
Paradox Interactive has made the brave decision to reboot the controversial Werewolf the Apocalypse setting entirely rather than try and fix it, and have somehow done a worse job than the games studio that released an RPG book titled an ethnic slur.
It's taken me almost a month since this came out to be anywhere near mentally prepared enough to even collect my thoughts on it.
Man, it is rare to see an edition of ANYTHING that pisses off old players, new players, players who want to keep the lore the same, players who want to change the lore, conservative players, radical players, and even powergamers.
How do you set out with the intention of making an infamously dated and poorly researched/outreached setting LESS uncomfortable and racist from a modern perspective.... and end up with something EVEN MORE racist and uncomfortable, but also suffocatingly tonedeaf, insincere, and deeply sinister and corporate in its erasure of existing issues rather than addressing them whatsoever.
We made the Get of Fenris irredeemably evil because some of them in the past were nazis and also nazis like Germanic mythology, so the viking werewolves are all nazis now.
Okay, I understand why you did that from a modern political perspective even if its kind of heavy hand-
The Native American werewolf tribes have been removed entirely and replaced with American Murican werewolf tribes. Renaming and rewriting them to be more respectful was just too much work! Now they're more inclusive. :)
The Irish werewolf tribe is now the Nature Werewolves tribe, like every other tribe of Werewolves also is, but also stripped completely of celtic origins.
The Red Talons are openly genocidal ecofascist malthusians and somehow NOT IRREDEEMABLY EVIL like the Get of Fenris are.
Also the feminist all women werewolves are no longer all women or even feminist. AND ALSO SOME OF THEM ARE SOCIAL DARWINISTS AND THATS SUPPOSED TO BE A GOOD THING!?!
Also we entirely dropped the themes about how forcing children to be a part of a war they barely understand while also lying to them about the crimes their ancestors committed that led to the current crisis is fucked up and evil.
Now its actually awesome to be a child soldier born into a repressive apocalyptic death cult with a siege mentality and everything is cool about that actually, you're the Good Guys, and no amount of covered-up historic genocides or internal/external bigotry will ever change that! :)
Also we solved the way people were uncomfortable with the idea that werewolf society is transitioning messily from being horrible ableist assholes that discriminated for centuries against those they view as deformed, disabled, or sexual deviants to new generations that don't care about that stuff, by removing disabled werewolves entirely! Problem solved! No more discomfort or moral conundrums! We are the liberal-est!
There's just something so unbelievably fucked up and suspicious about erasing entire minorities from a fictional universe because they were handled poorly in the first edition, rather than talking to writers and outreach specialists FROM the real world equivalents to those minorities to try and rewrite them.
Don't worry, we removed the group the setting was bigoted against! Problem solved! Just remove the minority!
I've written my own post on why the Metis/Crinos-born should be renamed and probably rewritten, but as a severely disabled individual with multiple hereditary disabilities that severely impact my QoL, outright removing disabled characters in a work of fiction because the prejudice other characters showed them in-universe made people uncomfortable makes me want to tear out someone's throat with my teeth.
Sure, completely remove my ability to play disabled a character fighting back against prejudice and bigotry, rather than rewrite the most uncomfortable aspects of YOUR FUCKING PORTRAYAL OF THOSE CHARACTERS to make it more clear who the sympathetic one is supposed to be.
It's just so unbelievably cowardly and whinging and wretched.
So fuck it, I guess!
Fuck the deeply applicable themes of being born into a well-intentioned but deeply flawed and bigoted society, and trying to create the better world your parents always told you your ancestors fought for, while dealing with the fact that your world is built on mass graves those ancestors helped fill.
Fuck a game that deals with intergenerational trauma and the ethical hellscape that is a highly religious society devoted to the very same ideals it often violates just to win fights against the enemies it created through its own arrogance and prejudice.
Fuck a game that lets you play someone born different, born strange and sickly, bouncing constantly between people who pity you and people who view you as subhuman, before finally finding the people, the family who love and accept and fight alongside you for a world that has never accepted you, but WILL FUCKING KNOW YOUR NAME.
That's not relevant to the real world at all!
There are no kids born in deeply flawed and hypocritical societies, who grew up on stories of the glorious future their society would create, forced then to reconcile the hopeful dreams of a better world with the comprehensive list of horrific things done in the name of that future.
There are no children born confused and alone in their navigation of the maze that is past atrocities, ethnic conflicts, religious prejudice and dogma, or modern propaganda attempting to erase the histories of all of those things.
There are no disabled teens who spent their lives believing they didn't belong in the world, kept going only by the connections they forged with other outsiders and people who fought back against the kind of wretched bigotry that suffocates children to death, who found homes and families they could trust outside the pissant communities they were born into.
Apparently those people don't need a game! They don't need to explore those feelings!
Just throw some more nazis in, so we can pretend we care about social issues or understand the redeeming threads of a deeply flawed gameline, ostensibly so we market it to leftist youngsters, but while we also erase the entire point of a game WHICH IS ALL ABOUT BEING PUNKASS YOUNGSTERS DESPERATELY TRYING TO FIND THE REDEEMING THREADS OF A DEEPLY FLAWED AND PREJUDICED SOCIETY THAT CONSTRAINS THEM, FINDING A WAY TO REBEL AGAINST BOTH THE EVILS OF THE RACIST BASTARDS WHO RAISED THEM AND THE POMPOUS SHITHEADS WHO WANT TO DESTROY THE WORLD OUT OF GREED.
No! We want a squeaky clean, sterile white game that AmericanTM parents can be proud of their kids for playing! A marketable game, that advertisers will gladly pay Revenue to put their products in! Play the good guys, everyone! You're the good guys! Be a big werewolf UwU!
Don't worry about historical atrocities or the flaws of the society that raised you! That's Pentex propaganda!
Fighting bad guys means you can't do anything bad yourself! The Emperor told me so! Deus Gaia Vult!
A hollow, performative, offensive jizzstain that should've been scrapped in its crib. I have no idea how this edition got past a quality assurance team.
Hell I have no idea how it got past a legal team, given the number of real peoples' likenesses they used without permission.
Devoid of artistic integrity or merit.
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darkelfdice · 9 months
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Our latest Kickstarter is now live!
Magic Potion Dice
Shimmering Liquid Core Dice Sets -- Bring Amazing Dice to Your Gaming Table
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On a lot of the polls, there are variations on the "somebody please play this with me"
Which inspired me to ask
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pluralpcs · 7 months
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So You're a Singlet and Want to Play a Plural PC?
We see this come up from time to time. A singlet wants to play a character with "multiple personalities" or something like that.
We think that's really cool! The advice and information on this blog is free for anyone to use to have fun!
But there's likely a few things to consider if you're singular and are trying to play a plural character.
For the Edge!
We are not fans of considering things "cringe". We definitely cause people to cringe at our self expression. Hell, this entire sideblog could wind up on a cringe subreddit some day. So we are not against making "edgy" characters.
But we do have to admit that there are players out there who make characters for what seem to be the sole reason of being edgy. And that in and of itself isn't wrong or bad (we have some real edgelords in our character portfolio). It just happens to be the case that sometimes these players won't mesh well with the rest of their table, or they might stray into the territory of mockery.
Dissociative Identity Disorder and Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder type 1 (or Multiple Personality Disorder if you're getting old school with your language) are stigmatized disorders, which in turn means that there will be players that slap them onto their characters to make the character more tragic, serious, or otherwise edgy. These aren't the only ways to be plural, or for plural characters to exist, but they are probably the most popular depictions.
So it might be tempting to just give a character an edgy alternate personality state. But it's important to not make a caricature. Just like you shouldn't make stereotypes of other identities and disorders, you should be kind with your plural ones. Don't rely on stereotypes or negative media depictions. Consider the fact that DID and OSDD-1 are common enough that you have probably met people with those disorders. Yes it's an extreme disorder for some of us, but for others it's just kinda, part of our lives (and for many it's somewhere in between).
Do Some Research
Simple as. This follows from avoiding stereotypes and caricatures. Look up other plural blogs. Read some threads on r/plurals. Listen to plural folk about our experiences. Hell, if you know some systems maybe talk to them about the idea for a character. Keep an open mind. Be willing to change your concepts about your character and plurality around.
Be a Few Team Players
A lot of advice for working with a group of other players will likely apply well to your plural character. It sucks ass to have that one character that's always trying to roll to pick pocket the other PCs. It still sucks when that character is a headmate of a plural PC. Keep in mind that you're playing a game with a group of other people, even if your playing a group of people sharing a body.
Our best advice for playing plural characters is the same as our general advice to other real life plurals: to think of the collective as being an internal team. Try to make sure that the different headmates of your PC are not at each others' throats constantly. When one headmate makes a promise to another PC, the other headmates should take responsibility with keeping that promise. If your plural PC is adventuring with a group of other PCs, then all of the headmates should be to some extent on board with this.
Of course, this advice can always be broken when it's worth it to the group and the story. Just like it can be fun and narratively appropriate for two PCs to get into a fight with each other, it can be fun and narratively appropriate for two headmates to come into conflict.
Something Special
There's something to be said about wanting to be special. People want to be special. And when they make characters, they want those characters to be special. And oftentimes those things are thrown at people as an accusation to grind them down and make them shut up. But everyone's special. Everyone has a whole ass life that they've lived that has uniqueness and commonality to it.
This is true of PCs as well. If you make a plural character, you're making a character that's special. And so are your singular PCs. It's likely the assumption that your character is singular, so it feels special or rare to make one that's explicitly plural. But all of the characters at your table are in some way special or rare. That's true by virtue of the fact that they're the characters your story and game focuses on.
So if you're playing a plural character, remember that while they are special, they are no more special than the rest of the PCs at the table. Share the spotlight. Engage with each other. Invest in everyone's story. Lift each other up.
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silvercompassmaps · 1 year
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The Burning Warehouse
Arise, arise, for the old warehouse is on fire!
Presenting my first Phased Battlemap! This set features a 8-part encounter of a fire quickly enveloping the entire warehouse. 
For VTT users, specifics include:
- Dimensions: 3000x4000 (100 PPI)
- Grid Size: 30x40
You can download this 8-part set for free here.
Find my entire map archive here. Consider supporting me on Patreon if you enjoy my work!
If you want free monthly battlemaps mailed to you, sign up for my newsletter here.
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zhjake · 11 months
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Lancer Eidolon fight for a client graciously allowing me to draw my two main interests, big robots and fucked up meat demons from another dimension
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arsene-inc · 2 months
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So one of my favorite french ttrpg will be translated in English : KNIGHT RPG.
Play as modern knights in mecha armor (armors named after dnd classes), fighting against the darkness and horrors, the Anathema, that invaded Earth. An Epic Horror game
With a system based on combo of attributes, loads of dice where all the even numbers are successes. Different horrors on differents parts of the world ( with some more hidden of course),
Big cities full of lights controlled by rich and immortal people ( never a source for concern, no never)
With a free quick start here
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losttrailsmaps · 2 months
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Enter a dense and deadly expanse where vibrant foliage conceals lethal threats at every turn. Its air hangs heavy with the scent of poisonous blooms, while its tangled undergrowth shelters legions of venomous serpents, making it a treacherous realm for any who dare to venture within.
Hi guys, welcome to Lushfang Jungle! This map pack features 16 total maps, including jungle waterfalls, villages, ruins, and much more.
Here are some quest ideas to get you started:
As the adventurers navigate the poisonous jungle, they stumble upon a tribe of natives who worship a deadly serpent deity, and they must uncover the truth behind the tribe's dark rituals before becoming sacrifices themselves.
A deadly plant known as the "Veil of Madness" has begun to spread throughout the jungle, causing hallucinations and violent behavior in those who come into contact with it, and the adventurers must find a way to destroy the source before succumbing to its effects themselves.
Rumors abound of a mysterious fog that rolls through the jungle at night, leaving behind petrified corpses in its wake, and the party must brave the deadly mist to uncover its origin and put an end to the terror it brings.
You can download 4 jungle maps for free here.
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kamabr · 1 year
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more info about the free goncharov (1973) ttrpg!
[link to the tiktok]
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