#ttrpg review

[hendrik-ten-napel]

Two things I like about Quinns Quest: 1) his preference for vibes-based design over system talk, and 2) his recognition of the power of roleplaying games to play with real world themes and history. That segment on how the Wildsea might represent, in certain senses, a better world, or the segment on language and culture, represent conversations I long for most in our hobby.

#Quinns Quest #indie ttrpg #ttrpg design #ttrpg review #vibes-based

[arsene-inc]

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.

#ttrpg #tabletop rpg #tabletop roleplaying #ttrpg stuff #indie ttrpg #ttrpgs #jdr #ttrpg recommandations #speedrun #ttrpg system #indie ttrpgs #ttrpg campaign #ttrpg community #ttrpg review #ttrpg rambles #ttrpg resources

[cannibalhalflinggaming]

"The gorgeous book and art catches your eye, but what makes Wildsea unique in its worldbuilding vision is that there’s follow-through. The concept is outlandish: The world has been overrun by a veritable forest of massive trees, and your characters ‘sail’ across it on a ship that’s essentially a giant chainsaw. From this base concept comes many of the underlying setting assumptions, and they help the world feel cohesive even though it, at a high level, works very differently from our world. In an ocean of wood fire is catastrophic, so there is taboo against open flame. That affects how things are cooked, which in turn affects culture around food. The ‘spits’, settlements above the treetops, are threatened by the constantly growing and shifting flora, so impermanence is, once again, reflected through the whole culture. The game sticks the landing on creating something new by thinking through the core concept they present." - @levelonewonk

#ttrpg #wildsea #rpg #ttrpg review #review #tabletop

[cassimothwin]

What waits quivering beneath the crashing sea? Read The Isle, written by Luke Gearing and published by Spear Witch, to find out.

Designed for The Vanilla Game RPG, a lightweight retroclone OSR-system, The Isle is a body horror dungeon crawl adventure that’s pretty playable in most fantasy RPG systems with minimal reworking. I could see someone running it with Mörk Borg without much issue. This review is of the physical book, but it also comes with a PDF and an EPUB (yay EPUB!).

Something draws your players to the isle, a mostly forgotten, small, and haunted piece of sea-locked land that 10 monks call home. The party is likely to either force or lie their way to the seal: a bone-porcelain disc hidden beneath the monastery floor. Once broken, adventure calls from below, where there awaits hundreds of years of horrors with lore and worldbuilding woven into the fabric of each room…

There are 5(ish) floors of around 10-20 rooms each in this adventure. But what about these floors is so evocative? The dungeon is a bit indescribable as a whole. Strange and violent creatures with alarming habits occupy this prison. Floor 1 is close to what you’d expect to find in a dungeon near the sea, but the domain grows more horrifying the farther down intruders go. One of the “floors” is actually the inside of a huge mysterious sea-thing where players navigate through organs.

The creatures are sublime. Beyond being just undead, they’re wonderfully described and horrifying. They’re not all dangerous, and some even promise power. Players might meet an amalgam of pony teeth that rolls around chewing air and stone, choose between helping two undead brothers permanently remove the other from this plane, assist a worm in its quest to ratatouille a giant sea-thing creature, or just die to one of the many interesting yet easy-to-deliver traps...

Read the full review on my website! 👇

#ttrpg #osr #dnd #indiettrpg #rpg adventure #ttrpg review #body horror

[presidentofbirds]

The Bleeding Lily Crowned in Shackles is an Abyssal and a chivalric queen of her domain - one granted to her in death by the Mask of Winters. While she owes the deathlord for her unlife, she walks a path of honor. I think she's a great example of a heroic Abyssal.

Her write up is extremely economical with wordcount, establishing a strong backstory and personality as well as a heathstone, manse, and artifact.

#exalted #exalted 3e #exalted rpg #ttrpg #ttrpgs #ttrpg review #adversaries of the righteous #sword lesbian

[criggsycat]

Ebb Tide: A Wretched and Alone Game by Stephen Kohler

I was able to give this solo rpg a go when I was researching for my own Wretched and Alone game, and I gotta say the vibes are wonderful! Isolation-type horror with an otherworldly threat, as you search a massive cruise ship for a way to survive.

If you are unfamiliar with the Wretched and Alone system, basically they are difficult to survive - but not impossible. While you pick your tasks from the deck of cards, completing the prompts it gives in your journal, you will also slowly take from a tumbling block tower. When the tower falls, so do you.

Would recommend!

#I got very lucky and won on my first go 😌 #not to brag lol #solo rpg #solo ttrpg #ttrpg #indie ttrpg #creative writing #ebb tide #wretched and alone #ttrpg review

[chaosos59]

Eberron is a great setting, but for the dedicated worldbuilder or historian there's some pieces that don't quite align with how things went down in the real world — in this post I explore how to use that to enhance your game!

#eberron #worldbuilding #dungeons and dragons #dnd5e #ttrpg review #I've been really bad about posting these #i like my blog but self promo is hell

[zigmenthotep]

Hey, watch my review of the The Walking Dead Universe TTRPG! I spent an obscene amount of time on it and it's... let's just say "not performing well"

#ttrpg #ttrpg review #the walking dead #the walking dead universe #zombies #Youtube

[mortphilippa]

Recipe on Kmiydish Paper by Pearse Anderson and Aylin Erkin is a solo game where you play as a recipe and chart how it changes between different cooks.

#Recipe on Kmiydish Paper #indie ttrpg #Ttrpg #Solo game #Solo ttrpg #Lost and found game #Review #Ttrpg review

[gigantic-spider]

Hiria: the Eternal City readthrough (part 4)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

In this final installment, we turn to writing journal entries and ending the game. As always, the game is Hiria: the Eternal City by Peter Eijk.

The instructions on writing journal entries is essentially: write them. Makes sense, we've basically been given all the component parts of a prompt with the city, event, and trace.

I don't know if I would describe these component parts as "prompts" as the game does, but that's just semantics. This is where the benefits and flaws of the fairly general Events and Traces tables become evident though. I understand not wanting to be too specific for those tables because they might not fit whatever city you find yourself in, but they're also so general that they don't offer much in the way of guidance beyond what you're already getting from the city itself. idk, it just feels a little underdeveloped compared to the rest of the game.

The game ends when you fill up your or your Quarry's tracks, leading to one of two outcomes: you catch them or they get away. There are some questions to answer, which are very revealing of what the game wants to be about. I'll call out three in particular:

Are you satisfied with the outcome, or are you left with a hole you can't fill?

If you gave up, why? Did you realize the futility of your chase, or did your feelings about your Quarry change? Or did you change?

Do you want to leave the city now? Can you even do this?

That last question shows up in both outcomes, and taken as a whole the game is clearly most interested in how this journey and this city has changed you. It's almost not interested in the Quarry at all, except as a plot device to get you into the city and to keep you moving through it. (There are of course other questions that relate to the Quarry, but those are much more straightforward questions.) An appealing way to play this game is congealing in my mind where you don't even know who your Quarry is because it just doesn't matter that much.

With this in mind, the open-endedness of the 'prompts' makes more sense. If you want to focus on finding your Quarry, you can make your journal entries about tracking them down and the investigation. If you want to focus on your character changing through this journey, you can write about the city itself and how you interact with it. But even on that level, I find the results you get on the table to be a little lacking. The Events should be more evocative and so you can think more about how you engage with the city! The Traces should help you consider what you know about your Quarry and the chase itself! Having now read through the game, I'm just left wanting a little more from it, but we'll see what the play experience is actually like.

#ttrpg #ttrpg stuff #ttrpg design #indie ttrpg #tabletop role playing game #tabletop roleplaying #gigantic spider reads #hiria the eternal city #solo game #solo journaling game #critique #review #ttrpg critique #ttrpg review

[randomtangle]

Hey! Found an old draft of mine, I never finished it. I might finish it later if I have the time, but I just thought… might as well post it! So, here you go!

Tabletop Tuesday: Konosuba: God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World TRPG

For this Tabletop Tuesday, I’d like to talk about Konosuba: God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World TRPG by F.E.A.R (Far East Amusement Research).

Setting

Konosuba is based upon the light novel series of the same name by Satō Natsume. I can’t say I’ve read that series, but luckily the book has a section on the setting. It’s a pretty simple fantasy isekai setting. Magical world, starter town is named “Axel”, there’s an Adventurers Guild, the Demon King is bad, there’s a clan of magic users called the “Crimson Magic Clan”.

Rules

The game runs on a purely d6 system, so don’t worry about dice. First, I’ll explain character creation.

Characters each have a race, a class, and seven ability scores, as well as skills and items. There’s also the optional cheats, which are powerful traits that can massively unbalance play.

First off, your race. There are three races: Reincarnated Person, Native Inhabitant and Crimson Magic Clan Member. When you choose your race, you get to select a racial skill. Reincarnated Persons can get bonuses to their equipment (gifted to them as a boon during their reincarnation), Native Inhabitants can get bonuses to their stats and Crimson Magic Clan Members can get bonuses to their magical abilities. Races also affect your ability scores.

Next, Classes. There’s 12 starter classes: Warrior, Priest, Wizard, Thief, Adventurer, Archer, Elemental Master, Creator, Swordfighter, Knight, Lancer and Rune Knight. Additionally, there are four Advanced Classes: Crusader, Arch-priest, Arch-wizard and Assassin. You can only choose them at CL (Character Level) 10, so don’t worry about them. Classes modify your ability scores, HP and MP, and give you some skills unique to your class to choose from. You get 5 levels worth of skills, and can start with class skill levels up to level 2. Pretty simple.

Now, Ability Scores. There are seven scores: Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), Agility (AGI), Intelligence (INT), Perception (PER), Mind (MND), and Luck (LUK). They do pretty much what you think they do. Strength is for strength, agility is for agility, mind is your willpower, etc.

Skills are the meat of this rules sandwich. They vary from passive traits to unique actions that modify your rolls. Skills can cost MP, have checks and ranges and targets. Spells are classified as skills.

Items are your equipment. You get 500 KE to spend on items. Classes may restrict equipment.

HP and MP are your health and magic. As mentioned before, MP is used for skills. Action points determine the order of action for characters. Movement is your movement.

Now, onto combat.

Conclusion

#randomtangle #ttrpg #ttrpg review #Tabletop Tuesday #konosuba

[stilljumpingback]

Curse of Strahd Review

I finished DMing a two-year Curse of Strahd campaign, and I want to share the resources and changes that elevated our game into something I will never forget!

“Under raging storm clouds, the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich stands silhouetted against the ancient walls of Castle Ravenloft. Rumbling thunder pounds the castle spires. The wind’s howling increases as he turns his gaze down toward the village of Barovia. Far below, yet not beyond his keen eyesight, a party of adventurers has just entered his domain. Strahd’s face forms the barest hint of a…

View On WordPress

#Curse of Strahd #D&D #rpg #Tabletop and Video Games #TTRPG #ttrpg review #vampires

[cannibalhalflinggaming]

The Discourse spins on, and its latest incarnation is, broadly, this:

Reviewing a game after reading it versus reviewing a game after playing it.

Oh. Oh wow. Are… are we The Discourse?

#ttrpg #ttrpg review #meta #Discourse #tabletop #social media

[bekandrew]

Horse Girl TTRPG by Samuel Mui, a Review

It has trigger warnings for “grotesque body horror, torture, dehumanization, bestiality, pregnancy, sexual situations, and consenting to having horrible things done to you by someone you love.” I would like to note that the “bestiality” in question involves no animals, only the player character – a human being transformed physically into an approximation of a horse who all the while appears to maintain human intelligence and reasoning. The abuser may very well meant to be a zoophile, but no real horses are harmed, only the player character. There is a prompt that references significant morphine use in context of after a procedure, which some may want to be aware of before playing as it's really the only potential trigger that wasn't mentioned. Horse Girl is what it says on the tin – it’s incredibly and deeply fucked up. It isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a journaling solo RP about a young woman who gets progressively transformed into a horse by her abusive lover.

I cannot emphasize enough how fucked up this RP is. Don’t get me wrong, though. That’s not a complaint, that’s a compliment.

It manages to be extremely grotesque without ever feeling unnecessary for the message. It crosses lines of taste without ever feeling like it truly went over the top. Abuse, after all, in all its forms is extremely grotesque. Abuse, by its nature, crosses every line of taste.

I should note here, before I go further into the review, that I’m an abuse survivor myself.

I didn’t have a Jenga tower, so I used the count down method. This ended with a fairly long game of 14 Months and most of my deck gone through.

I didn’t have a normal deck, so I used my tarot deck. I removed the Major Arcana and Pages (substituting Knights for Jack). I assigned each suit to their playing card equivalent, so Cups were Hearts, Coins/Pentacles were Diamonds, Rods/Wands were Clubs, and Blades/Swords were Spades.

I didn’t write on my body, but rather mentally noted the markings. I otherwise did the playthrough cleanly, without having read more of the contents than necessary to do what I was meant to. After I was done my playthrough, I read the remaining parts of the PDF.

I’m not sure how intentional the suit designation for the card draws were, but I was impressed with how well the prompts matched the (tarot) meanings for the suits – Cups being the emotions (especially love) suit, Coins for stability, home, and material advantages; Rods for thoughts and ideas; and blades for conflict and… in the game, some literal surgical blades!

While the Spades prompts were the most visceral (my heart started sinking whenever I saw a Blade card pop up because I knew whatever I was about to read was going to be some new fresh hell), they actually weren’t the most disturbing prompts, personally. I found the Hearts prompts most distressing because of the particular style they were written. They express an undying love even while detailing what should be obvious to the reader as clearly abuse. But it isn’t necessarily known to the character, or perhaps the character is in denial depending on the player’s interpretation and phase of the game when they draw it.

The stylistic choice of always capitalizing the lover/abuser’s pronouns, as if He were a god-figure is impactful to the play. It brings home how all-consuming the desire to please this new center of her world is, to make sure He is happy, even to her detriment, even as every last piece of who she was is warped to be completely unrecognizable.

This game is a horror story, but more than that, it’s a tragedy. It’s a loss of self. Every little piece of yourself that you mark is one of the obvious pieces that gets lost in the process. But the game notes that the transformation is both mental and physical. The mental loss is more subtle. It’s harder to see it building up. You don’t mark it on your body, but it can cause the game to end.

Like abuse, it comes in spurts. The mental loss comes when you may least expect it. There are times, and in my game there was well over a month straight of not receiving any of this kind of loss. The game kept on and the horrors kept progressing because the abuser seemed like He was being nice then. This mechanic is an example of phenomenal game design. I wish I had a Jenga set to play it with because the risk of knocking over a teetering tower would add another layer of tension present in this kind of relationship – that constant walking on eggshells feeling. Some of the cards make a little less sense on the surface when they get drawn in the narrative after certain other cards. This isn’t a flaw per se, as they’ll still fit in the end, but may require a bit more thought in your journaling process.

I nearly had my character escape, I was very close but kept rolling too low to remove escape tokens, even with three visible Aces, I kept experiencing setbacks in my playthrough. The odds of escape are very much stacked against you once you’re stuck there. I had a plan, at first very subtle but as time passed and the horrors increased, my steps increased in desperation and brutality in equal measure.

The game isn’t clear whether the abuser is catching onto the player character’s escape ideas or attempts or is simply jealous and paranoid of the player character leaving him. This distinction, to the extent it even matters (as the results are more or less the same either way) is up to the player to decide in their journaling activities.

I most appreciated the questions at the end. Without them, this would have been a well-written psychological horror journalling RP about an abusive relationship and still worth trying. With the cooldown questions at the end, it really puts a spotlight on how much the writer cared about the subject matter and the readers.

I’ve written and engaged in very intense horror LARP before, and we did something similar there. We all had a cooldown period together where we got out of character and reflected on the experience. The questions at the end of Horse Girl are like that but in written form, and for a single person. They helps you pull back to the real world and analyze the character you just played to see her with a new understanding before releasing her.

I was briefly concerned as a trans person before playing there might have been some unintentional transphobic leanings in the allegories – specifically looking into the concept of doctor coercing an entire species(?) change on his partner. I walked away not feeling that way at all. I also didn’t feel any specifically trans coding in any of the abuse. It simply felt like a more visceral version of abuses heaped on domestic violence victims that aren’t necessarily that blatant normally.

Though, it is worth noting that one of the specific and personal body-horror ways a trans person may experience abuse in a relationship is by the abuser coercing them out of or otherwise preventing them from accessing transition. There’s a similarity to the player character’s plight in that there’s coercion involved, there’s feelings of conforming to a body that doesn’t necessarily feel right to you to make your partner happy, and the lack of access to care can be excruciatingly painful. But again, I don’t really think this is a trans allegory or a story about transphobic abuser. It could be in your personal play-through, but that would be an additional detail you chose to add on your own.

I would recommend this game to anyone who thinks they can stomach the contents within, particularly if they are fans of body horror and psychological horror. If you find catharsis through horror games, be mindful going in how low the odds of successful escape are and the experience may be what you’re looking for. It’s a highly intense experience. You may need one or several breaks throughout.

Horse Girl is available on itch.io here. The creator put a handful of community copies up in case you aren't able to pay $8 but it is well worth the price.

#indie ttrpg #review #ttrpg review #itch.io #body horror tw #abuse tw

[presidentofbirds]

During the initial release of Adversaries as monthly entries, Eska was very cool because she gave us a preview of some Lunar Charms. Also, her daiklaves come as a set of six.

#ttrpg #ttrpgs #ttrpg review #exalted #exalted rpg #exalted 3e #adversaries of the righteous

[criggsycat]

I played 'An Amnesiac's Anthology' lately and I would highly recommend! It is a short free solo journaling game - took me around an hour to complete. In the most positive way: it ripped my heart out and put it back in very lovingly <3

#solo rpg #solo ttrpg #indie ttrpg #ttrpg #an amnesiac's anthology #creative writing #ttrpg review