runningdoggames

[runningdoggames]

A Sprinting Owl Manual For Making TTRPGs

So I wrote a guide to making TTRPGs.

It's taken me a couple of weeks, plus a lot of feedback from valiant community members, and it's been revised from about 20 pages to 67.

It covers theory mostly, but it has workbook sections and it gives a basic runthrough on the whole process from initial concept to feedback on the published release.

If this is something you think might be useful to you, or to someone you love who has been afflicted by rpg design, feel free to take a look.

(It's available for free, just hit the button under Community Copies.)

[runningdoggames]

A really excellent article about the origins of the X-Card, and how it wasn't originally meant to just cover triggering material. I recommend giving it a read!

[runningdoggames]

W A K E U P O M E N

This place used to be Houston, now it’s something else, something dying. Titans, lords of industry and everything else left are the ones keeping it in a half-life. There’s a rot that runs so deep there’s no saving it anymore, not as it is. There’s salvation and devastation down this path, but you already knew that, Omen. Free the Hue, free yourselves, and free the future - the Titans must fall.

Titanomachy: DREAMS OF THE HUE / Demo Edition is now live, a fully playable version of the full release entering Kickstarter in late Spring of 2025. It contains the full rules, 19 classes, an example Titan and plenty 00's sensibility but-make-it-nightmare art from the incredible Jonatan Anjos and Minerva McJanda.

Built on The Wildsea's mechanical engine, TDotH is a fast and furious queer blitz of a tabletop roleplaying game, shrouded with furious revolutionary anger but cored through with hope for a better future.

Fans of Cyberpunk 2077, Spire, NorCo, Jeff VanderMeer, Neil Stephenson, Metropolis, and the work of Tom Bloom (Kill Six Billion Demons) and Wildbow (Worm, Twig, Pact) will find parallels in the broken world we've built for you to tell incredible stories in.

We hope you join us Omen, there's work to be done.

DOWNLOAD HERE

[runningdoggames]

hey yall i got a chapter published in a textbook talking about how i use ttrpgs in my classroom :o) its open access so anyone can read it. i namedrop a few indie ttrpgs in here!! yall should check it out :D

sneak peek:

[runningdoggames]

hello! if you've ever found yourself wishing armour astir: advent, the mecha-fantasy-revolution ttrpg we all know and love, had a physical copy, i have great news: it's going to! and you can sign up to be notified about it launching on kickstarter later this year RIGHT HERE. it's gonna be a niiiiiice big print run, so don't miss out ✨

[runningdoggames]

Fascinated by the idea of building a character for your partner player instead of yourself.

The Prose Life of Sundered Lovers by Simon McCarthy Boon

[runningdoggames]

We are giddy to announce that we are working with tabletop roleplaying legends Magpie Games to create Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game, a fully-fledged, custom tabletop roleplaying system for Fallen London, in a big book and everything!

In Fallen London: the Roleplaying Game, players create their own characters by drawing on the factions, archetypes, and settings of the city — cutthroats, socialites, radicals, academics, and other, stranger creatures. They are brought together by a shared ambition; a very nearly unachievable goal. Such ambitions may destroy or drive mad those who pursue them… or they may change London forever. The Heart, as they say, is Destiny’s engine.

Fallen London: The Roleplaying Game is slated for release in late 2025 along with a supplement, Fallen London: Secrets of the Neath. In addition, players will be able to complete their tools for gameplay with the Fallen London Dice Pack and Fallen London Gamemaster Screen. Gameplay will consist of proprietary game mechanics currently in development by Magpie Games. We’re going to introduce the project in full on August 23rd at 16:00 EDT/21:00 BST in a live stream, hosted by noted gamemaster Johnny Chiodini on their YouTube channel! Guests will include Mark Diaz Truman and Brendan Conway from Magpie, and Fallen London creative lead Bruno Dias and me, Hannah, the one who sends the emails.

Fallen London is turning 15 in 2025 and this is our big anniversary project. We wouldn’t have got here without you; we hope that this is a suitable anniversary present. 

[runningdoggames]

tarot asks! Sun and Hermit

The Sun — Talk about a game you’ve made that you’re proud of.

yall keep askin this one its very sweet <333

i'm really proud of shadow / giant !! its built on the badger+coyote srd but i did a lot in the way of flavor text and layout design that im really happy with :) i think its a pretty flexible game while still having a strong central concept. genre and setting agnostic but clear goal. if you like the lone wolf & cub trope this one would be for you!!

witness layout <33

[ID: three pages from shadow / giant. it shows the goals and scenes page, the giant character sheet, and a page on miscommunication. the first page is in dark blue and the background is a littered forest floor with light yellow text. the second page is designed to look like its written on a photo of a notebook. the third page has the text in one corner with a framed photo of a spiderweb and the bottom half a photo of a child reading. end ID]

The Hermit — What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned about game design? OR Are you interested in collaborating with others?

i would totally collaborate with someone, yeah!! the closest ive gotten is making the 5e witch class with @hmooncreates but that was so much fun. and my friends definitely provide feedback on my games as im brainstorming for them. but actually fully collaborating on a game from the ground up would be really interesting and i think i'd really enjoy it. so, you know ... mutuals hmu

[runningdoggames]

Another storytelling rule I think people should remember is the law of diminishing returns. If you keep on ramping up the stakes higher and higher and higher, after a point it gets to where the audience can’t really care anymore.

[runningdoggames]

Ultimately an RPG that uses playing cards as a randomizer but doesn't actually utilize the cards for. You know. The things that cards can do. Is just using them as a fancy, weirdly shaped die.

A few things that cards can do that dice can't:

You know that dice superstition that people have about how if they roll enough low numbers they're bound to get a high one? That sort of actually works with cards provided cards aren't immediately returned to the deck and the deck reshuffled. Because there's a limited number of each "roll," good or bad.

You can hold them in your hand. It's basically like pre-rolling a bunch of numbers and then getting to spend those numbers as they become relevant. Maybe you only get to draw more cards by playing all your cards, meaning that if you don't conserve your good cards your character's luck is eventually bound to run out.

You can make poker hands with them. Added to the previous point, maybe you will be forced to play a worse hand and have your character flub a non-critical roll because you're hoping for that better hand that'll turn the tide.

There's suits as an added bit of information that can be utilized for some mechanics. Maybe matching suit with an action type results in an extra benefit?

[runningdoggames]

Have you played THE ZONE ?

By Raph D'Amico

Surreal horror play-to-lose RPG. Based on media like Annihilation and Stalker, you play as an expedition into an exclusion zone from which no one has ever returned. Watch yourself mutate as your team tries to reach the Center of the Zone in order to have your greatest wish granted.

[runningdoggames]

next video will be about Wanderhome's obscured lore and I wonder if I should cash out my credibility by doing the most clickbaity youtuber shit imaginable... "THE DARK SECRET POSSUM CREEK DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW"

and then I have a big red arrow pointing to like, a rabbit or something

[runningdoggames]

TTRPGs Bundle

Gargantuan mega superbundle alert!

If you want a ridiculous number of TTRPGs---and also for your money to be donated in full to a medical aid charity that is attempting to tend to the victims of an ongoing crisis---games in this bundle include:

Wanderhome, FIST, Gubat Banwa, Caltrop Core, Eyes On The Prize, Gun & Slinger, Maharlika, Karanduun Make God Bleed, Oldhome, Cuticorium, Gravemire, Moonlight On Roseville Beach, Hypermall Unlimited Violence, Killotine, Mourn, Beacon, Sunfish Sitting There, Mashed, Kernel, Star & City, and a great many more.

That's nearly 700 TTRPGs, all bangers, something for every genre and table, available until end of June 2024.

(in this post I have avoided saying certain words in case they algorithmically influence its reach and visibility, please feel free to say those words in the reblogs)

[runningdoggames]

Pray By Letter

The Japanese TTRPG scene is extremely wide and varied and deep. We get games from it periodically (Ryuutama, Shinobigami, Maid, Golden Sky Stories, Floria) but we don't see anywhere near the whole scope of the scene, and barely a fraction of the indie.

Indie publishers like Malstrom are working to bridge the gap between scenes, translating titles from EN to JP and JP to EN. They've already brought the big indie titles Nova and Liminal from the English speaking indie to the Japanese speaking indie, and now they're bringing Pray By Letter from the Japanese speaking indie to the English speaking one.

I was an early reader for Pray By Letter's translation, and I think folks here might love it.

Pray By Letter is an epistolary rpg. That is, two players take on characters and write letters to each other, focusing on a problem in their characters' lives. Each player has a hidden scoring criteria, called Milestones, which can be completed if the other player says the right things. Each character also has branching endings, which are affected by their milestones.

The tone is soft but earnest, and the game is extremely willing to lean into tragedy if that's what the players want.

A bunch of scenarios (called playsets) are included in the core book, and the overall feeling of the game is the same sort of distant-but-close that you get when you're friends with people who live far away.

Community copies are currently available, and I'm crossing my fingers that this title does well as I'd love to see a bunch more translations from the deeper Japanese indie.

[runningdoggames]

A quick update as for why it's been quiet here recently:

1 - I got my doctorate and a cool sword!

2 - I'm moving from Hawaiʻi to Oregon later this summer!

Anyway, exciting life stuff happening, and I'm also excited to finally have time to dive back into game stuff within the next few months. At the top of my WIP list is Untitled Doomed Expedition game, a play-to-lose game inspired by works such as The Terror and The Thing. Keep an eye here for updates!

[runningdoggames]

my favorite way of thinking about TTRPG rulebooks lately has been as a work of art which has been designed to inspire a group of people to create a new work of art together

[runningdoggames]

A free one-page RPG for playing out the final days of a spaceship hotel.