#ttrpgsolidarity

[indierpgnewsletter]

Playing Rabbits in an RPG from 1976

(This continues our 2024 series, 10 Games From The First 10 Years. First published in the Indie RPG Newsletter)

It is genuinely surprising to me that in 1976, within two years of D&D coming out, someone published a game about being rabbits. It makes a little more sense when you realize that it was inspired by Watership Down and the designers were, I believe, zoologists or something similar. But having read it, the premise is the least interesting part of this game. It has so many fascinating little ideas.

Bunnies & Burrows is a game about rabbits … but these aren’t just rabbits, they fight, explore, gamble, study herbs, see the future, parley with beetles, find love, have children – and the list goes on. The end result are characters that ironically feel more human than you’d imagine.

As I play more games, I learn about games, sure, but I’m also learning a lot about myself. And a rule of thumb has slowly emerged: I want to play games that lead to interesting, surprising, unique things being said by the players. I’ve sometimes phrased it as “people want to say cool shit at the table”. I’m people.

Bunnies & Burrows starts with D&D as a jumping off point – there’s that old, familiar rolling 3d6 down the line to get your stats. But that’s more or less where the similarities end. You have rules for fighting but it’s not D&D combat – this game is often described as having “the first martial arts system” but what this means is that fighting is mostly weapon-less and involves declaring actions that flow into each other as patterns or c-c-combos. Basically, some actions set up other actions – you can’t Rip into another rabbit unless you already pulled off a Bite & Hold in the last turn. Some actions like Run aren’t possible if you’ve just done a Pin or a Rip in the previous turn and so on. I didn’t actually get to play out a fight but these rules got me grinning.

And the whole thing is like that. The study and application of herbs is meant to be a little puzzle where through trial-and-error and dice rolls, you slowly figure out what’s good for you and what isn’t. The languages and persuasion rules mean that certain characters can become envoys to other species. Because a language can mean the difference between things turning violent and a peaceful negotiation between rabbits and a mother scorpion that has accidentally wandered into their warren.

Don’t get me wrong. Most of these little pieces are eccentric and inelegant – always more convoluted than you’d like but still a major leap forward in playability because in the end, it’s a d100 roll under a target number. All the fiddliness – and there’s a lot of it – lies in the absolutely esoteric ways this game invents for calculating that target number. But I find it easy to forgive this in an old game, especially when the most interesting part of the game doesn’t lie in the mechanics but the negative space the rules seem to create.

The donut hole in the centre of this game – fruitful void? uncrowded centre? – is the question: What is rabbit society like? This is a setting question – or rather, a system of relation question – that is never asked but it must be answered. The mechanics have some opinions. For example, every player picks a profession when they make a character – Empath, Seer, Storyteller, Scout, and so on. Some of this comes from Watership Down, which can, of course, be your ready-made answer – it’s the unstated but obvious setting sourcebook for this game. But if you don’t go down that route, you’ve got a juicy problem: What do we value? What do we despise?

#indie rpg #ttrpg #ttrpg community #ttrpg design #ttrpgsolidarity

[zhjake]

An illustration for another one of my groups Lancer campaigns, Under the Monolith

#lancer #lancerrpg #lancer rpg #ttrpg campaign #lancer ttrpg #ttrpg homebrew #ttrpgsolidarity #ttrpg art #ttrpg #purple #rpg art #ttrpg artist #illustration #illustrator #digital art #Digital Illustration #mech #mecha #mechas #mechs #robot #robots #horus #harrison armory #ips-n #ipsn #zheng #barbarossa #balor #hydra

[joelhappyhil]

DAWN’S BETA IS OUT!

I’ve been writing and refining this for at least 3 years now, and I intend for this to be the final major update before releasing the game in full. I’ve got a ton of things to say about this update but if you just want a link to the game it'll be below.

Here’s the link: https://joel-happyhil.itch.io/dawn! Below the option to purchase at full price there will be a bunch of community copies for any who want to download but can’t/don't want to pay.

For those who know nothing about it: DAWN is a Battle Shonen (a subgenre of anime and manga) inspired tactical TTRPG that I’ve been developing since I started my last major release (Star And City 2E).

I consider it the result of everything I’ve learned with writing and game design, it has the most collaborators I’ve had on any project, and it’s a product I’m incredibly proud of. Also, its precursor, Advent Dawn, was the first game I ever posted on Itch.

I want to note that this version is in no way complete, and should be read as such. There's the obvious missing art and text to start (which I’ve marked with a WIP image).

This version will likely have issues, as this is the first time this version has been shown publicly. Despite this, I’ve done as much as I can with my limited testing, I feel the book is a presentable and enjoyable product for any who’re interested in it.

I’ve also started a Itch funding tracker that’ll be active for the first 2 weeks because this update is a big deal to me and I want to see how much support I can get for the final release. I appreciate any support you give because of it, but don’t feel pressured to.

You may know I already ran a Kickstarter campaign for DAWN, this is why I haven’t set up any rewards for this itch funding, as I feel it would devalue the support I got on that initial KS, I just like to see numbers go up.

I can’t express how much I appreciate any amount of support. If you're interested in testing the game there’ll be a Discord link in the document that you can use to find my community, where I’ll be trying to test the game at least weekly and answer any questions asked.

#indie ttrpg #dawn #kickstarter #crowd funding #game design #indie stuff #books #ttrpgsolidarity

[capacle]

Spring sale 2024

Hello, my dear friends!

I'm running a very special  ❀ 𝓢𝓹𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓢𝓪𝓵𝓮 ❀

All my games are 30% off for a very limited time!

Support an indie creator today! 🪷🏵️

Share it freely! 😊

#indie ttrpg #ttrpg #global south #solorpg #ttrpgsolidarity #ttrpg community #spring sale #itch.io

[starshinescribbles]

Do you love animals?

Do you love TTRPGs?

Then do I have the bundle for you!

Get 65-animal-based TTRPGs including HONK!, Lemurs On The Loose, Crossfox, Webworld, Throne Rats, This One Boy, Snakes And Wolves, and many more for only $20!

Check it out!

#animals #lolcats #lolcats are cool right? #meme #ttrpg #tabletop role playing game #tabletop rpg #ttrpg community #ttrpgsolidarity #tabletoproleplayinggame

[raakdos-battlemap]

[Ravnica Battlemap]Azoruis Chancery

Believing that their legislation is the singular force that prevents Ravnica from descending into chaos, the Azorius Senate mediates and regulates the activities of all of the other guilds and the general populace despite their numerous decrees being ignored in areas that they have too little a foothold in.

Variations of this map:

#mtg art #ravnica #battlemap #dnd maps #murders at karlov manor #roll20 #ttrpg #dnd #dnd art #dnd5e #d&d oc #d&d #d&d 5e #d&d art #dungeons and dragons #ttrpg maps #ttrpgsolidarity #ttrpg art #ttrpg community #dnd 5e

[unlawfulgames]

Our book is now available for public purchase y’all! Check it out if you like goats, troll unions, troika, haunted living cairns, swarms of tiny Boschian ne’er-do-wells another other such lovely shenanigans! Not to mention cobblestone magic, weirdly pastoral liminality, fighting capitalists, Look’n Fer Meaning, and eternal travel down an endless road.

#ttrpg #ttrpg community #indie ttrpg #roleplaying games #ttrpg design #ttrpg art #goblincore #troika #bridgetown #bridge #goat #troll #rpg #indie #Billy goats gruff #rpg things #ttrpg things #ttrpg stuff #ttrpg dev #ttrpgsolidarity

[innocentgoblin]

Every object we have ever owned is a part of us and our lives.

Designed with the amazing Jack, the DM of the Dice And Them Podcast, This is Your Death is a solo journaling TTRPG where you construct the events of someone's life through the objects they were buried with!

With each object you can explore the owner's emotional attachments to it, from when they first got their hands on it and how it changed over time. After three to five objects, you can piece together the story of their life.

This is Your Death comes from a fascination of archaeology and how materialism can be explored to give more personal information from an archaeological find!

#ttrpg community #indie ttrpg #ttrpg design #ttrpgsolidarity #journaling #archaeology #Ok it was half an excuse to complain about some older archaeologists #Like I will take any excuse to take pot shots at Arthur Evans #Especially if my two dissertations are anything to go by! #But despite that it's actually a really fun and thought provoking game that everyone should check out!

[sapphicworldttrpg]

A little bit about us!

Hi! My name is Darling Demon Eclipse, creator of Sapphicworld. Sapphicworld is a horny queer fantasy game with a post-capital setting, as tenderly imagined as it is intricately researched.

It draws from kinky fantasy, mythology, Judaism, history and philosophy to create a world that is gentle, modern and sexy, but also painted with a brush of severity, history and import.

It is currently in pre-production, and will be crowdfunding soon! In the meantime, here’s some art from the game.

First, two pieces by myself, representing The Under-Plane (Sapphicworld’s underworld) and Heavenhead (a land of clockwork and turbines, full of strange creatures)!

Second, art of The Curious Male-Nun and The Tw*nk Controversial from Ronan, and art of Conch, Doyenne of Chaos, Simon, Doyenne of Golems and Harne, Who Studies Dragons from Aster Rose!

#ttrpg #ttrpgsolidarity #Sapphicworld #queer #lgbtq #lesbian #gay #sapphic #art

[monkeyslunch]

Grim Accoutrements. Coming soon.

Cover and byline WIP. Pending if it'll be DMs Guild or Drivethru RPG.

#ttrpgs #ttrpgsolidarity #osr #horror games #vampires #dms guild

[indierpgnewsletter]

There's Other Kinds Of GM Advice: Theatricality versus Transparency

(This first appeared on the Indie RPG Newsletter)

I find that broadly there are at least two kinds of GM advice – and they have a very different philosophy underpinning them.

The first kind of advice aims at all costs to maintain verisimilitude. It’s a solution that you can implement without breaking the players’ immersion in their characters. This can just be stuff like Matt Colville explaining that if your players are taking too long discussing plans, guess what, orcs attack! We’ve all probably played a game where people were going in circles and not able to decide what to do. If it looks like we’re not able to decide, we’re probably going to be relieved if the GM makes something happen to break the deadlock and prompt us back into the action.

(Historically, this kind of thing was taken to egregious lengths like Gary Gygax saying if players start acting uppity, have a rock fall on their head. It’s mostly gone now but reddit tells me that Cyberpunk Red which came out relatively recently still says something similar.)

The second flavor of advice involves breaking character and talking to your players directly. I know “talk to your players” is a mantra repeated so often that autocorrect suggests it as soon as you type the letter t. At its worst, this advice is vague and unhelpful. We’ve all considered talking frankly to people in our lives, we just find it awkward and hard and annoying. But, but, but – at its best, just describing the problem as you see it and escalating it from a character discussion to a player discussion will make it go away instantly. Like magic. (If you’re not sure what that means: In a previous issue, I discussed Jason Tocci’s excellent advice on escalating conversation in this way.)

And since the theatrical flavour of advice has the weight of history on its side and transparent advice keeps getting boiled down to mantra form, I thought I’d write down some examples of situations and some alternative ways to handle them:

Situation 1: The players are marines discussing whether to dive into the alien lair and recover their stolen engine (their main goal) or go and see if another missing team of marines is okay. There is only 45 minutes left and this is a one shot.

Theatrical: The other marines suddenly come on the radio and say, “hey we’re okay, please complete the mission.”

Transparent: “Hey, folks. There’s 45 minutes left. If we don’t do the alien lair now, we won’t be able to do it at all. Is that fine?”

Situation 2: The players are low-level fantasy nobodies who have a famous wizard friend. They’re about to tangle with some medium-level bad guy and decide to call in their wizard friend.

Theatrical: When the players try to contact her via a telepathic phone call / spell, she sounds breathless and says she’s busy doing something way more important like fighting a dragon.

Transparent: “Hey, folks. If we get the wizard in, she’ll absolutely make this fight a cakewalk. We won’t even need to roll initiative really. Is that what you want? Or would we rather have a fun fight?”

Situation 3: The players were having fun exploring when they meet a cool NPC (an android! an elf! an android elf!) who has this interesting backstory with an urgent, earth-shattering hook. They go along with the android elf because it seems more important but immediately look like they’re having less fun.

Theatrical: Narrate how the android elf meets a group of other android elves and have the elf say, “Hey, now that I have these folks helping me, you can leave it you want!”

Transparent: “Hey, folks. Talking to you as players here, do we want to stick with this whole android elf plot here? It does mean that we won’t do any open-ended exploration. Which would you prefer?” If they want to ditch the elf plot, you could just retcon it entirely or do the theatrical solution.

All of these situations have happened at my table. They’re all relatively low stakes and I think whichever way you handle it, it’ll probably be fine. But that said, some situations absolutely work better when done transparently so if you’ve never tried the transparent way, give it a shot. If immersion matters a lot to you, try it at the end of the session.

/End

PS. The theatrical options often still require the players to willingly suspend their disbelief and go with it. If a player didn’t play along, they might just say “I thought their radios weren’t working, otherwise we could’ve just contacted them before. Why can they suddenly contact us now?” or “Oh, the wizard is fighting a dragon right now. We can totally wait. There’s no reason we need to fight the bad guy right now.” And sometimes I can’t shut off that part of my brain either so I won’t judge. But if there’s a way to sidestep that situation even coming up, I’m going to take it every time.

#indie rpg #ttrpg #ttrpg community #ttrpg design #rpg #ttrpgsolidarity #game design

[zhjake]

Gyeong Soominh, callsign "AMMONITE" and her HORUS Balor, "ENTROPIC STATE"

#lancer ttrpg #lancer rpg #lancerrpg #lancer #horus #balor #art #ttrpg artist #artists on tumblr #artist #ttrpg art #ttrpgsolidarity #ttrpg homebrew #ttrpg campaign #ttrpg #rpg #rpg art #mech #mechs #mech art #mech design #mecha #mechas #mecha art #mecha anime #mecha design #robot #pilot #character art #character design

[joelhappyhil]

3rd DAWN Archetype: Disruptor!

Been very busy with updates (Many of you who've read the most recent public version will see the differences) but I've got the 3rd Archetype for ya!

This is the Disruptor! A package of powerful lockdown and space control tools for the aspiring Witch.

#indie ttrpg #ttrpg #dawn #kickstarter #indie stuff #ttrpgsolidarity #game design

[seanpatrickcain]

216 fame-hungry celebrities.

#ttrpg #ttrpgsolidarity #indierpg #rpg #ttrpgs #indie ttrpg

[raakdos-battlemap]

[Ravnica Battlemap]Kamen Fortress 32x56

Kamen Fortress is the newest of the Boros stronghold in the Tenth. It overlooks the Smelting Quarter, Deadbridge Chasm, and Wayport, keeping watch for Rakdos activity. As the Theatre of Order headquarters, this is its prime directive.

Other variations of this map:

#mtg art #ravnica #battlemap #dnd maps #roll20 #murders at karlov manor #ttrpg #dnd #dnd art #dnd5e #mtg #magic the gathering #battlemaps #rpg map #battle map #ttrpg maps #ttrpgsolidarity #ttrpg art #dungeons and dragons #tabletop #ttrpg community #fvtt

[officialguild66]

Guild66 Launch!!

Check it out! Guild66 is live! I can't believe it's happened! I'm totally overwhelmed! Hit the link below to see more!

This video will hopefully tell you everything you could need to know about the project! If you wanna know more, have a look at the Kickstarter story or grab a Free copy of the Hunter's guide!

Here is a Free early access look at the Hunter's Guide! Take a look and tell us what you think, if you like what you see, please consider backing the Kickstarter wake Guild66 up and make it come to life!

Thanks so much for looking through this thread, sorry it's so link heavy! I really hope you guys are as excited as I am! See you soon!

#table top role playing game #game design #gamedev #guild66 #gaming #ttrpgsolidarity #ttrpg design #ttrpg oc #ttrpg art #ttrpg #tabletop #indie ttrpg #indiegamedev #indie roleplay #indie #kickstarter #help #Youtube