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Continuation from my previous thread (because it got long), of stuff from @200-word-rpgs that I find interesting.

THE CURSE: A Rabbit and Steel Fangame by @ringedretrospective I'm not sure I've even HEARD of "Rabbit and Steel" before, let alone know what it's like. But having "apologize for what you did last night", as the single sentence for the "day" phase, amuses me greatly.

Make Brown by @thee-rat-king I like colour stuff; I also appreciate how "should or shouldn't end up brown" is a 50% thing determined at the start of the game. And that's just SUCH a cool concept, how one player gets their colour combined with that of the other.

Paleolithic Fantasy by @cavetalesz I agree with the writer (whose url is PERFECTLY fitted for this game), we need more stuff set in this… setting. And also more FANTASY stuff in that setting; heck, if we're going from the thing we commonly see in fantasy of "magic has been fading from the world", then the earlier back we go, the more room there is for magic (and also it's not like there's any written documentation to contradict it). As to the game itself, I appreciate how the "stuff you find" table includes entries with relevant stats, and then at the end there's just "the antlered man", no detail given.

Elegy For A Better Yesterday by @notsomeoneyouknow I don't have enough familiarity with John Woo movies to properly appreciate this. But from the design notes, it seems like a lot of thought went into mechanics that properly match the theme.

Mires by @i-exist-for-spleen and manguypersondude I appreciate something that, as they put it, turns "how partial a GM is inevitably going to be" into a feature and not a bug. Also, something that started with a design requirement ("no dice math") and then built from there. And yeah, when you just stumble upon a theme or concept that ties everything neatly together, that is SUCH a good feeling; the spark of inspiration that lights up the tinder you've prepared from your own efforts.

You Know How This Story Ends by @indraklyr I just think it's cool; everyone has things that will happen, then those things get placed in an order, then you play out how the things happen.

You Sunk My Battleship! by @ineffable-gallimaufry Gotta respect something that finds a way to turn BATTLESHIP, of all things, into an RPG.

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Itch.io Releases AI Disclosure Tag

Itch.io has their store edit pages to include an AI disclosure toggle, asking if your project contains the results of generative AI. Each option adds a tag to your project: "Yes" automatically assigns the AI-Generated tag, while "No" automatically assigns the No AI tag. Assets comprised of generative AI (even if modified afterwards) that are not tagged will no longer be eligible for indexing on their browse pages.

You can read more about this here.

This system should allow users to filter the tags that they don't want to see in their search options. If you have a project on Itch, I recommend checking your Edit pages and completing the AI Disclosure!

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Drawing stars on sticky notes?

What do you get when you combine Progress Clocks, Aspects, Usage Dice, and Insight Rolls?

If you answered “an unholy mess”, well, that’d have been my guess too if someone asked me that. But that didn’t stop me from doing it anyway. And, surprisingly, instead of creating an abomination that shouldn’t see the light of the day, it became the core mechanic of my newest game, one that I’m giddily excited about.

I want to dive deeper into this quirky little mechanic called Sparks, that involves drawing stars on sticky notes. In essence, it is a tool to track progress of any kind. Towards a goal, an event, an effect, whatever. But in a closer look… well, it is more than that.

Escaping the temple

Let’s say you grab an ancient idol from a cursed temple, triggering a self-destruction spell. You need to escape before the temple collapses and traps you inside. You’d grab a sticky note, write “The Temple Collapses,” and place it on the table. Your Spark is now created.

To advance the Spark, you’d add rays to the star when certain fictional or mechanical triggers occur. For example, if you spend too much time in a room while trying to escape, you might add a ray to represent the passage of time. Or say you try to place a heavy rock in place of the idol to stop the spell, and you roll a bad Fate Check (the equivalent of a Yes/No Oracle or a Fortune Roll in other games), you’d add a ray to the Spark. A particularly bad roll (e.g., a 1) might even add two rays.

Up until this point, you might be thinking, “Well, this is just a Progress Clock.” But here’s the fun twist: every time you advance the Spark, you may perform a Spark Check by rolling a D6. If the roll matches a ray on the star, the event happens, and the Spark resolves.

For instance, if you’ve added two rays to your Spark and roll a 1 or 2, the temple collapses. If you don’t hit a ray, the temple holds, and you can keep pushing to escape. This creates what I like to call “controlled unpredictability”. You get a sense of the odds of the event happening, but you can’t predict exactly when it will occur.

If you continue advancing the Spark—for example, by getting lost or failing additional rolls—the likelihood of disaster increases as you add more rays. Let’s say you roll again with four rays and hit a ray. The temple collapses, trapping you. The Spark resolves, and now you must deal with the consequences.

But that’s not all! Let’s say you miss all previous checks and end up filling all five rays of a Spark. Well, you still have to make a Spark Check. But since the Spark has only 5 rays and the die has 6 sides, rolling a 6 after the star is full results in an Overturn.

An Overturn flips the expected outcome. If the event was negative (e.g., the temple collapses), it might turn positive: the collapsing ground reveals a hidden network of ancient tunnels filled with mysterious symbols. What was almost a certain disaster opens up as a new path your adventure can take!

SIDE NOTE: I get it that using stars as a tally marker may not be the most intuitive graphical solution. I honestly chose it to meet the vibes of the game, and give it an air of mysticism, like it is more than just a counter. But I encourage you to use any form of tracking you prefer: tally marks, tokens, numbers, checking boxes and so on.

Flexible and modular

I hope that by now you can see this is more than a tool to count up to 5. If you follow me for a while, you know that I’ve toyed with the same idea in Derelict Delvers with Danger Clocks. In that game, they are restricted to represent monsters and obstacles. In Everspark, they can do all sorts of things.

You can use Sparks to track challenges, such as overcoming obstacles (including combat); the arrival of looming threats; the depletion of meaningful resources; contests between parties vying for the same goal; long-term projects like crafting, studying, or achieving a personal milestone; and conditions affecting characters, enemies, or environments.

Sparks can also track events like a lunar eclipse, the arrival of a king; the use of special power sources like mana or magical items with limited charges. They’re useful for tracking character advancement (including multiclassing), exploration (like a full journey or delving into a dungeon), or even montage scenes where you tackle complex challenges like making plans, setting camp, or preparing for a journey.

You can even create layered challenges to represent more complex or powerful enemies. Say you are fighting an enormous creature, and you want it to be a high-stakes and dramatic encounter. Instead of relying on “HP inflation” and just make, say, a 3-star Spark, you can represent different aspects of the challenge with separate Sparks, like a Spark representing an Arcane Shield that needs to be dealt with before harming it, and another one for its Spiked Tail that causes all sorts of trouble for melee attacks.

Instead of turning the combat in a boring meat grind, you have to approach the encounter as a puzzle. Different characters with unique skill sets can contribute, and the whole scene becomes more dynamic. You can even have environmental Sparks representing dangers or potential opportunities.

And the best thing is: you don’t need to prep that in advance. Crafting Sparks is part of the game. And I encourage you to do it as a collaborative process, if you’re playing in a group. We have a lot of fun brainstorming possible things we can add to a scene to make it even more memorable.

Spark-based scenarios

Picture this: you’re deciding who gets to be the next captain of the ship. It starts with a skill contest. It’s two candidates—you against them—and you are displaying skills to decide who’s going to be the captain. You have a resource Spark, which is the crew support. You can tap into it to gain leverage, but it can go either way—perhaps the crew support goes to your adversary, making it a double-edged resource.

You have to resolve this contest before the serpent god arrives (a threat) and, who knows, eats the loser of the contest. All the while, you’re dealing with the storm of the century (environment), which is battering the ship and tossing the crew around. On top of that, the ship is leaking (escalation)—because why not?

This can be a full session of chaos, crazy ideas, and unpredictable outcomes, with new Sparks being created as a result of complications and bad rolls. Others might be discarded as the situation evolves. It’s a wild, chaotic, and incredibly fun experience.

On top of that, you can bend the rules with “Spark tricks,” which are ways in which you twist and bend the rules of how to advance and resolve Sparks. These include locked rays (which can’t be hit), regenerating rays (that are erased), linked Sparks (where one Spark affects others), resistance (making two spark checks and keeping the worse result), and persistent Sparks (which remain active even after being resolved).

You get a sticky note! And you get a sticky note!

These are just a few ideas. It’s important to note that Sparks are modular, optional and disposable. They can be used for almost anything, but they shouldn’t be used for everything. You can handwave situations, roleplay them, or use just a few rolls to resolve them. But if you want more granularity, want to zoom into the action, or want to give more screen time to certain moments, Sparks can certainly help. And when a Spark is no longer relevant, you can simply discard it, even without resolving it.

It’s amazing all the things you can do with a simple piece of paper

My advice is that you introduce Sparks gradually into your gameplay—the book itself divides Sparks into Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. In my home game, we’re seventeen sessions in, and since all players are already comfortable with the mechanics, it is beautiful to see the proliferation of Sparks: characters are working on new skills, getting rid of curses, and trying to find lost relatives. The city has a creature about to arrive, a gang following them around, and more. All that tracked with Sparks.

Just think of nachos

When I was coming up with a checklist of the things you have to consider when creating a Spark, I had a pleasant surprise. See, you need to create the Name of whatever you’re tracking; decide how and when it Advances; when you need to make a Spark Check; what happens when you Hit a ray, what is a possible Overturn; and if there are any Special rules or conditions.

Hence, the NACHOS template was born.

Obviously, you don’t need to write every detail down for every Spark (or for most Sparks, really), but it is a good way to make sure everyone knows how the Spark behaves and to align expectations. If you want to play around with how a Spark works, just think of Nachos.

Hack it away

I’m super excited to get this in everyone’s hands and see what creative people can do with it by bending its rules and applications. I see it as a tool to inject a layer of tension, suspense and surprise to what could otherwise be just a tally count.

I’m working hard on editing Everspark at the moment (meanwhile, the campaign is on late pledge, so you can jump in if you want). It’s coming out nicely, I must say. The Sparks chapter has nearly 20 different suggested ways of using them, all with examples. And more nuance than I can fit on a post.

I’ve also published a video explaining this concept in even more detail:

Meanwhile, check out the campaign page and join us to keep the Everspark alive! And I’d sincerely appreciate it if you shared this around with people that might like it.

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i published an article about using ttrpgs in higher education classrooms with rascal :) got to interview two VERY cool game studies professors and also talk about my own experiences !!! 5 minute read, please check it out :D

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The Human Observatory News

This is a solo journaling game

The goal is to product a breaking news segment from the point of view of the non human residents of the House.

For this you need a six-sided dice or D6, something to write or record the segment.

Roll a D6 for the point of view (POV)

1 : House pet(s)

2 : Furniture and objects

3 : Insects

4 : Plants

5 : Toys or figurines

6 : Aliens

Choose the anchor(s) for this POV. Give them a personality trait.

Roll a D6 :

1 : Serious / Deadpan

2 : Smiling / Optimistic

3 : Jokey / Irreverant

4 : Dramatic / Over the Top

5 : Negative / Pessimistic

6 : Incompetent Weather Presenter that got this job by mistake

Then roll a D6 to see what the breaking news is about :

1 : The Human has done something silly

2 : The Human has done something uncomprehensible for the POV

3 : The Human has done something outrageous for the POV

4 : The POV paints a good image of a mistake the Human made

5 : An action the Human made has affected the POV

6 : Another POV's action has affected the anchor's POV

Then write or record the event as a television news piece from the current POV.

200 Word RPGs 2024

Each November, some people try to write a novel. Others would prefer to do as little writing as possible. For those who wish to challenge their ability to not write, we offer this alternative: producing a complete, playable roleplaying game in two hundred words or fewer.

This is the submission thread for the 2024 event, running from November 1st, 2024 through November 30th, 2024. Submission guidelines can be found in this blog's pinned post, here.

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Every day is a reason to celebrate 🥂🥳

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Hello 😇👋,

My family and I are facing incredibly difficult times due to the ongoing war in Gaza 💔. Our dreams and future have been shattered, leaving us feeling lost and without purpose. My brother Anas and I have launched a GoFundMe campaign to help us escape Gaza, continue our education, and support our family.

Making a small donation or sharing the campaign — would mean the world to us.

Link: https://gofund.me/9c46877a

Thank you so much for your kindness and support 💖

With gratitude,

Ahmed Basil

Vetted by @90-ghost & @gazavetters

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I do think that recent "Batman guy" ask I got was pretty funny, if only because it also betrayed a very narrow understanding of RPGs as a medium. "People will flock to D&D and Pathfinder because they support long-term play, I mean I guess Vampire and Blades in the Dark do too but whatever." With zero awareness of the fact that "games that support long-term play" is the default in the hobby and not just some unique quirk of D&D and a couple other weird games. Like, really not doing a lot to shake off the Batman Guy label.

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Fun Game: Make Yourself in 3-6 Eureka Traits!

There's a bit more to Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy character creation than just picking Traits, but this is a meme not a serious character creation session.

Make yourself in three to six Eureka Traits. Here's a big list of them. This isn't literally all the Traits, just the ones that have finished art. If you want to pick from all the Traits, feel free to download the free rulebook linked above! If you want to go a little further, you can explain your reasoning for why you picked each Trait and what they mean to you and about you.

Tag us, or just reblog your results onto this post! You don't have to make yourself either, it could be a character from pop culture, your friend, your OC, whatever! We wanna see what you do with it!

List of Traits (Non-Exhaustive)

Ambidextrous

Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking

Arithmomaniac

The Ascot

Ask Questions Later

Believer

Blissfully Ignorant

Bumbling Detective

Burnout

Cheerleader

Comfort Item

Dangerprone Damsel

Death Wish

Did You Know

Elementary!

Femme Fatale

Final Girl

Hard-Boiled

Hardy

It’s for a Book

I’m Okay, You’re Okay

Just Built Different

Just One More Thing

Kleptomaniac

Lovecraft Protagonist

Lover

Moneybags

My Glasses!

Night Owl

Nightstalker

Ninja

Not Finished Yet

The Other

Perfectionist

Push It

Predictable

Quick Draw

Renaissance Man

Rumbler

Showboater

Skeptic

Sleep on It

Smalls

Technically

Therapist

Unpredictable

Wicked

Wizened

Woo-Woo

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Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi

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It takes work to curate your online spaces, but if you don't do it, corporations will do it for you using a couple harmful key principles. 1) Negative emotions hold your attention better than positive emotions. 2) Calm/contented people are less likely to spend money.

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Calling all Indie TTRPG Makers

Hi! We are always looking for new games to play! We do a rules explanation episode, 3-4 episodes actual play, and then a review episode (and hopefully an interview with the developers). Please email us at tinytablebusiness@gmail.com if you want us to play your game! We hope to hear from you!

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Exerpt from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. (with art by team artist @chaospyromancy)

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The Princess Bride is such a funny book to read after ONLY seeing the movie. Like Goldman made up a fake author from a fake country and proceeded to write the book as an abridged version of what the fake author wrote... and then he proceeds to add in notes to the "abridged version" mentioning all the boring world building stuff he skipped because it was boring.

Like shout out to William Goldman, man really did make an entire book that is just "the cool scenes you thought of in your head" and then made up a fake author to abridge so he doesn't have to connect them.

And it slaps

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The Awards 2024 judge reveal pt. 1

With two days to go til the livestream, let me reveal some of our incredible judges (with the rest to come tomorrow)!

First up is Côme Martin (comemartin.itch.io), a White French TTRPG creator and one of The Awards 2023 winners with "Meanwhile In the Subway."

Next up: Dice Bob! They are a Hawaii-based Filipino-American TTRPG maker with the blog dicebob.com

When they applied to be a judge, he wanted to find answers to the question: "What is a game?" Tune in to the livestream to find out at least some of those answers!

Hélène Lupa is a White female TTRPG designer based on the US East Coast. She co-edits Alien Baby Mag, currently open for submissions (https://alienbaby.itch.io/alien-baby-call-for-submissions-issue-1), and got into the hobby via a collection of vintage '80s games inherited from her father.

John M. Null is a host of @realplaygamespodcast and a longtime player of games, volunteer-er at cons, and manager of official organized play groups. His major turn towards indie games began during the pandemic; he now has literal boxes of zines and is looking to spread the word about them

The final judge to reveal today is Luke Boniecki, a game enthusiast/aficionado from Poland with an eye for clever systems and OSR procedures, two decades of play experience, and several games designed as well (appendix-g.itch.io)

That's it for today's judge reveal! The other half will come tomorrow, and then the livestream the day after that!

Friday! 11/15! 7 pm EST (UTC-5)!

Be there!