mapsmonstersamazing

[mapsmonstersamazing]

Whenever someone responds to one of those posts pointing out that D&D only players will almost undeniably end up with a very narrow understanding of the RPG medium with accusations of elitism or "let people enjoy things" or "well yes but it's still okay to enjoy D&D and if you only enjoy D&D that's fine and a lot of people enjoy just D&D and are okay with it" there's a bit of sleight of hand going on I feel. Like, trying to turn a discussion about the monolithic stature of D&D and how D&D only players will be inevitably poorly equipped for discussions about RPGs as a medium into a moral argument, and since they have positioned themselves on the side of "it's actually morally okay to just enjoy D&D" then of course the other side of the argument must be making a moral judgement about people who play D&D.

It's very tiring and as someone who enjoys D&D among other games I wish D&D players would stop instinctively treating these discussions as if they are casting moral judgements on them and not simply observations of the material realities of the hobby. It has the markings of sore loser syndrome: the game you play is already the most popular to the point where many people are frankly sick of the way it sucks up all the oxygen from discussions, you don't get to pretend like the game is the poor underdog bullied by mean indie RPG fans online.

And like if you still feel self-conscious about the observation that playing only D&D will invariably lead to a very narrow understanding of RPGs as a medium, there is a very easy way to fix that!

[mapsmonstersamazing]

On of my favourite vices of old-school tabletop RPGs is the tendency to extend their subsystems absurdly beyond the game's intended scope purely to demonstrate forethought or completeness. Like, yes, player characters in your gaslamp fantasy game probably won't range beyond the boroughs of London, but should they for some reason find themselves on the planet Neptune, then by god they'll be able to calculate their social status with whomever they might find there!

[mapsmonstersamazing]

The Orbital Century

In my continuing project of hyping up indie RPGs, I've written a short story based in @ehronlime's "Spectres of Brocken!" I love the game's anime aesthetics and its melodramatic conflicts between high school classmates, so I wanted to try my hand at it!

[mapsmonstersamazing]

siren

[mapsmonstersamazing]

On a scale of Dark Souls to Devil May Cry, how fast are two-handed swords?

As always, more content, Tutorials and art refs over on Patreon

[mapsmonstersamazing]

I know the unicursal (i.e., non-branching) labyrinth is a visual art thing and doesn't at all match the description of the mythological Labyrinth, but sometimes I picture some sort of ancient Greek SCP thing with very speedy stonemasons constantly lengthening the path in order to contain a very, very slow Minotaur.

[mapsmonstersamazing]

Subway Runners Spreadsheets.

Subway Runners is a rules-lite Forged-in-the-Dark game that's designed for online play, created by @postdungeon and Gem Room Game, about gig-economy workers trying to fix subway line problems that are often magical in nature.

The original character generator is already really online friendly, but I like having my play-sheets all together in one place, and easily edited. These sheets have a series of drop-downs for your skills to match whatever gets assigned to your character, and boxes for all of the details the generator assigns you.

As always, there's also a Safety Sheet for the regular safety tools I use for my games, complete with links to the game and the character generator! You can find the spreadsheets for this game here, and a link to my folder of spreadsheets below.

Clicky.

[mapsmonstersamazing]

brennan answering the question "what would make a dragon unfuckable to a monsterfucker?"

[mapsmonstersamazing]

[mapsmonstersamazing]

Flossing is dead long live the health potion

[mapsmonstersamazing]

mimic health potion :)

I'll do my best

*gets in a glass bottle*

[mapsmonstersamazing]

[mapsmonstersamazing]

Splitting

Another thing about Eureka -

I was very sceptical on the insistens of splitting the party. Obviously not out of "balancing" concerns, that is not applicable.

But I was really reluctant to force some players to wait while they aren't in a scene.

The reasoning behind splitting is clear. It makes playing a monster at all possible, helps with suspense and the payoff of relaying gained information in character is really nice.

Still, I didn't think it worth it.

but

Its good. For sure when played over discord.

I dmed the same oneshot thrice. Two times in person, once online.

The first time, I applied the recommendation of splitting the worst. When the party split, I handled the scenes seperately, while the ones not in it had to wait, but I did not banish non involved people from the room.

Would feel bad in a social setting after all.

This was shit, since it had the downsides of splitting, without the payoff.

The second time, I did not read the "Split the Party" chapter to the players, they stayed mostly together, no problem, no payoff.

The third time, I played with a larger group and over discord. Each time, the group split, I sequestert them away into different channels, did their scenes one after another and only let them join up again when doing so ingame.

There was a lot of waiting on the players part, but also a huge payoff of fun. The session was fairly long (6h) and very cool.

And to my utter surprise the players did not only praise the fun of relaying information, but rather attributed their ability to keep concentrated for the long session, with having those little pauses to themselves, to gather their thoughts. What the fuck??

[mapsmonstersamazing]

I just had somebody tell me that a lot of my "here's a fucked up game concept" posts read like something from one of those setting riff threads you'd see on the RPG.net forums back in the early 2000s.

Imagine that.

[mapsmonstersamazing]

An incomplete taxonomy of esoteric texts:

This text is discussing esoteric subject matter

This text is being deliberately obscure because its author knows they don't have a coherent thesis and they're blowing smoke

This text is written in earnest, but its author has very poor communication skills

This text's translator has misunderstood something that was meant completely literally as a complex metaphor

This text is actually perfectly straightforward in its native language, but every available translation fucking sucks

[mapsmonstersamazing]

[mapsmonstersamazing]

See this, this is what I like about TikTok. Little moments like this