#I do have a lot of new ttrpgs as well

[hunter-creature]

Old ttrpg books. There are so many weird, terrible, and/or interesting ideas buried in these words from when D&D was still a new and novel concept. Pieces hadn't quite fallen into archetypes of systems and so every game developed their own (which was much mostly a bad thing and led to a lot of math). The current prize of this collection is Thieves' Guild by Gamelords LTD in 1980. It a bunch of mail order books I have in a yellow binder and it is by no means s complete set. The whole thing is built on being a thief and thus comes up with rules, systems, and scenarios through those eyes aka everything not nailed down has been valued. It gives you sleeping habits, guard rotations, neighbors, traps, environmental storybuilding. Its such an interestingly specific game that they would not stop writing packet after packet of. The prize under it is my signed copy of Synnibarr 2nd edition, infamously with its flying laser bears and trying to use speed and acceleration in its damage calculations.

I am so curious about what fellow dragonkins hoard (for those who hoard, or have an urge to, obviously)

Like…I love to see dragonkins proud of their hoard, no matter what it is, I want to see your hoards, know about it, understand you better, see what your dragon brain and instincts decided to make you hoard

If any dragonkins (that hoard) come across this post, please tell me what you hoard I want to hear about it 😔

[monsterblogging]

"I know JK Rowing is a terrible person but her books are so good-"

You sure about that?

I mean, just for a start, have you taken a good look at her fantasy creatures lately? A whole bunch of them are straight-up based on malicious and dehumanizing stereotypes about actual people.

Remember the werewolves? And being a werewolf was made into a kind of metaphor for having AIDS?

And you know how AIDS was first associated with gay men? And how conservatives back in the day were claiming gay men were preying on children in order to convert them to gayness?

Remember how Fenrir Greyback preyed on children in particular? Yeah, she put that subtext in there. She was an adult in the 90's. She knew damn well what she was doing.

Remember the house elves? Remember how most of them loved to serve and needed to have a home and a master or else they just wouldn't know what to do with themselves?

Did you know that's literally what slavers in the American South said about the Black people they kept enslaved? Go look up the happy slave myth.

Do I even need to get into the goblins and the antisemitic tropes they're based on? No, folkloric goblins were not gold-hoarding bankers waiting for their chance to stab humanity in the back.

"But the characters are so good!"

Are you kidding me?

Most of her characters are pretty one-dimensional, including Harry. Her idea of making a morally complicated character is giving a tragic past to a bully. Numerous characters are little more than stereotypes. (Looking at Fleur right now.) Literally anybody, including you, can easily make dozens of characters just as good, if not better. (It doesn't exactly take a lot of character designing skill to go, "hey, actually, having a sad backstory doesn't make it okay to bully children" or "hey, maybe I should not base a character on the first stereotype that pops into my head.")

"But the rest of the worldbuilding!"

Sorry, but her worldbuilding is just as basic as her characters. Magical castles and secret passages are stock tropes. Magical people who keep their true nature secret from humanity is the premise of pretty much every White Wolf TTRPG. Most of her fantasy creatures are just common European fairy tale and folklore creatures with shitty stereotypes projected onto them.

I'm not saying "basic worldbuilding bad." I'm saying, you could do just as good, if not better, with minimal effort.

Also there's her magical bioessentialism, where only Harry's abusive blood relatives could provide him with supernatural protection from Voldemort. Rowling thus effectively declared that non-biological family isn't quite real family, and that abusive biofamily can give you some essential thing that a loving, supportive family that isn't related to you just can't.

The Hogwarts houses are one of the most insidious elements of her worldbuilding. The idea of being sorted gives you a little dopamine hit because wow now you have a li'l niche where you belong!

But the actual function of the houses and sorting system and the House Cup is teaching children to see each other as rivals, and ensure that the most toxic views of the upper class get passed on to every new batch of kids sorted into Slytherin.

Hogwarts effectively prepares children for a dystopia where magic serves to distract its citizens from how nightmarishly awful it is. Economic inequality is so bad that people like Arthur and Molly Weasley can barely afford to put their kids through school, casual sadism is just an accepted norm in everyday society, and non-humans are second class citizens. Rowling sorta acts like she thinks this is a bad thing with certain lines she gave to Dumbledore, but in the end, her special boy protagonist becomes an auror; IE, a defender of the status quo. So.

If you've never seen it, Lily Simpson's video goes into even more detail on how the worldbuilding of Harry Potter is actually incredibly fucked up, and how it betrays small-minded attitudes on Rowling's part. There's no separating the art from this artist, because Rowling's rotten values pour out of nearly every page.

Yes, there are many things in Harry Potter that evoke feelings and inspire people, but there's absolutely nothing in it that this series has a monopoly on. You can find those same experiences in much, much better media.

[jessica-problems]

Seeing @thydungeongal constantly wrestling with people interpreting her posts about D&D in ways that seem completely alien to me has convinced me that there are actually multiple completely distinct activities both being referred to as "playing D&D" Before we begin, I want to stress that I'm not saying one of these groups is Playing The Game Wrong or anything, but there seems to be a lot of confusion and conflict caused by people not being aware of the distinction. In fact, either one works just fine if everyone's on the same page. So far, I think I've identified at least two main groups. And nobody seems to realize the distinction between these groups even exists. The first group of people think of "Playing D&D" as, well, more or less like any other board game. Players read the whole rulebook all the way through, all the players follow the instructions, and the gameplay experience is determined by what the rules tell each player to do. This group thinks of the mechanics as, not exactly the *whole* game, but certainly the fundamental skeleton that everything else is built on top of. People in the second group think of "Playing D&D" as referring to, hanging out with their friends, collaboratively telling a story inspired by some of the elements in the rulebooks, maybe rolling some dice to see what happens when they can't decide. This group thinks of the mechanics of the game as, like... a spice to sprinkle on top of the story to mix things up. (if you belong to this second group, and think I'm explaining it poorly, please let me know, because I'm kind of piecing things together from other people saying things I don't understand and trying to reverse engineer how they seem to be approaching things.) I think this confusion is exacerbated by the fact that Wizards of the Coast markets D&D as if these are the same thing. They emphatically are not. the specific rules laid out of the D&D rulebooks actually direct players to tell a very specific kind of story. You can tell other stories if you ignore those rules (which still counts as "playing D&D" under the second definition, but doesn't under the first)And I think people in both groups are getting mad because they assume that everyone is also using their definition. For example, there's a common argument that I've seen play out many times that goes something like this:

A: "How do I mod D&D to do [insert theme here]?" B: "D&D is really not built for that, you should play [other TTRPG] that's designed for it instead" A: "But I don't want to learn a whole new game system!" B: "It will be easier to just learn a whole new system than mod D&D to do that." A: "whatever, I'll just mod D&D on my own" And I think where this argument comes from is the two groups described above completely talking past each other. No one understands what the other person is trying to say. From A's perspective, as a person in the second group, it sounds like A: "Anyone have some fun inspirations for telling stories about [insert theme here]?" B: "You can't sit around a table with your friends and tell a story about that theme! That's illegal." A: "But we want to tell a story about this theme!" B: "It's literally impossible to do that and you're a dumb idiot baby for even thinking about it." A: "whatever, jerk, I'll figure it out on my own."

--- Whereas, from B's perspective, the conversation sounds like A: "How do I change the rules of poker to be chess, and not be poker?" B: "uhhh, just play chess?" A: "But I already know how to player poker! I want to play poker, but also have it be chess!" B: "what the hell are you talking about? What does that even mean. They're completely different games." A: "I'm going to frankenstein these rules together into some kind of unplayably complex monster and you can't stop me!" ---

So both people end up coming away from the conversation thinking the other person is an idiot. And really, depending on how you concieve of what it means to "play D&D" what is being asked changes considerably. If you're only planning to look through the books for cool story inspiration, maybe borrow a cool little self contained sub-system here or there, then yeah, it's very possible to steal inspiration for your collaborative story from basically anywhere. Maybe some genres are kind of an awkward fit together, but you can make anything work with a little creativity.

If, however, you are thinking of the question in terms of frankensteining two entire board games together, then it becomes a massively difficult or even outright nonsensical idea. For example, for skill checks, the game Shadowrun has players roll a pool of several d6 at once, then count up how many rolled above a target value to see how well a character succeeded at a task. The whole game is full of specific rules about adding or removing dice from the pool, effects happening if you roll doubles, rerolling only some of the dice, and all sorts of other things that simply do not translate to rolling a single d20 for skill checks. On a basic level, the rules of the games work very differently. Trying to make them compatible would be much harder than just learning a new game from scratch. Now, neither of these approaches is exactly *wrong*, I guess, but personally, I find the rules of TTRPGs to be fascinating and worth taking the time to engage with all the weird little nuances and seeing what shakes out. Also, the first group, "TTRPG as fancy board game" is definitely the older and more widespread one. I kind of get the impression that the second group largely got into D&D through actual play podcasts, but I don't have any actual data to back that up. So, if you're in the second group, who thinks of D&D as basically a context for collaborative storytelling first and a game second, please let me know if I'm wildly misunderstanding how you approach D&D. Because I'm pretty sure it would save us a whole lot of stupid misunderstandings.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Help Save the World of TTRPGs and Their Creators.

Okay I’m being a little dramatic, but at the same time I’m pretty serious. This is a call to action, and the livelihoods of myself and lots of other people, many of them (like myself) disabled, are depending on it. This is a post about why, what you can do about it, and (perhaps least often answered) how.

This post is actually an accompaniment to another discussion by someone else. If you don’t want to listen to a 90-minute in-depth discussion of much of what I’m about to tell you, you can just keep reading. Otherwise, click here or here and listen to this either before or after you read this post. (They’re the same thing, just different sources.)

If you have ever made or reblogged posts urging people to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox, you should be willing to at least give a try to other TTRPGs besides D&D5e for much the same principle reasons. I’m not telling you you have to hate D&D5e, and I’m not telling you you have to quit D&D5e, I’m just asking you to try some other games. If you don’t like them, and you really want to go back to D&D5e, then go back to D&D5e. But how can you really know you won’t like other games if you have literally never tried them? This post is a post about why and how to try them. If you’re thinking right now that you don’t want to try them, I urge you to look below to see if any of your reasons for not wanting to try them are covered there. Because the monopoly that WotC’s D&D5e has on TTRPGs as a whole is bad for me as a game designer, and it’s bad for you as a game player. It’s even bad for you if you like D&D5e. A fuller discussion of the why and how this is the case can be found in the links above, but it isn’t fully necessary for understanding this post, it’ll just give you a better perspective on it.

If you’re a D&D5e player, I’m sure at some point or another, you’ve been told “play a different game”, and it must get frustrating without the context of why and how. This post is here to give you the why and how.

[The following paragraph has been edited because the original wording made it sound like we think all weird TTRPGs suck.]

Before that though, one more thing to get out of the way. I'm going to level with you. There’s a lot of weird games out there.

You are gonna see a lot of weird TTRPGs when you take the plunge. Many of them try to completely reinvent what a TTRPG even is, and some fail spectacularly, others really do even up doing something very interesting even if they don't end up being what a core TTRPG player wants. But not every indie RPG is a Bladefish, lots and lots of them are more 'traditional' and will feel very familiar to you, I promise. (And you might even find that you like the weird experimental bladefish type ones, these are usually ideal for one-session plays when your usual group can't play your usual game for any reason.)

You're also going to probably see a lot of very bad games, and man have I got some stories of very bad games, but for now I'm just saying to make sure you read the reviews, or go through curators (several of which will be listed below), before you buy.

Now that that is out of the way, I’m going to go down a list of concerns you may have for why not, and then explain the how.

“I don’t want to learn a whole new set of rules after I already spent so much time learning D&D5e.”

Learning a new set of rules is not going to be as hard as you think. Most other TTRPGs aren’t like that. D&D5e is far on the high end of the scale for TTRPGs being hard and time-consuming to learn and play. If you’ve only played D&D5e, it might trick you into thinking that learning any TTRPG is an overwhelmingly time-consuming task, but this is really mostly a D&D5e problem, not a TTRPG problem as a whole.

“D&D5e has all of these extra online tools to help you play it.”

So what? People have been playing TTRPGs without the help of computers for 50 years. To play a well-designed TTRPG you won’t need a computer. Yes, even if you're bad at math. There are some TTRPGs out there that barely even use math.

“I’m too invested in the narrative and characters of my group’s current ongoing D&D5e campaign to switch to something else.”

There are other games, with better design made by better people for less money, that are the same kind of game as D&D5e, that your current characters, lore, and plot will fit right into and do it better. And no, it's not just Pathfinder, there's others.

“I can’t afford to play another TTRPG.”

You probably can. If you’ve only played D&D5e, you might have been made to think that TTRPGs are a very expensive hobby. They aren’t. D&D5e is actually uniquely expensive, costing more than 3x more than the next most expensive TTRPG I can think of right now. Even on the more expensive end, other TTRPG books will cost you no more than $60, most will cost you less than $20, and a whole lot of them are just free. If you somehow still can’t afford another TTRPG, come to the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book club mentioned below, nominate the game, and if it wins the vote we will straight up buy it for you.

(By the way, if you had any of the above concerns about trying other games besides D&D5e, that really makes it sound like you are in a textbook abusive relationship with D&D5e. This is how abusers control their partners, and how empires control their citizens, by teaching you to think that nothing could ever get any better, and even though they treat you bad, the Other will treat you even worse.)

“If I don’t play D&D5e, which TTRPG should I play?”

That’s a pretty limited question to be asking, because there will be no one TTRPG for everything. And no, D&D5e is not the one TTRPG for everything, Hasbro’s marketing team is just lying to you. (Pathfinder and PbtA are not the one system for everything either!) Do you only play one video game or only watch one movie or only read one book? When you finish watching an action movie like Mad Max, and then you want to watch a horror movie, do you just rewind Mad Max and watch it over again but this time you act scared the whole time? No, you watch a different movie. I’m asking you to give the artistic medium of TTRPGs the same respect you would give movies.

“I want to play something besides D&D5e, but my friends won’t play anything else!”

I have several answers to this.

Try showing them this post.

If that doesn’t work: Make them. Put your foot down. This works especially well if you are the DM. Tell them you won’t run another session of D&D5e until they agree to give what you want to do at least one try instead of always doing only what they want to do. This is, like, playing 101. We learned this in kindergarten. If your friend really wants to play something else, you should give their game a try, or you’re not really being a very good friend.

If that doesn’t work, find another group. This doesn’t even mean that you have to leave your existing group. A good place to start would be the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club which will be mentioned and linked below. You can also go to the subreddit of any game you’re interested in and probably meet people there who have the same problem you do and want to put together a group to play something other than D&D5e. You might get along great with these people, you might not, but you won’t know until you try. Just make sure to have a robust “session zero” so everyone is on the same page. This is a good practice for any group but it is especially important for a group made of players you’ve just met.

“I only watch actual plays.”

Then watch actual plays of games that aren’t D&D5e. These podcasts struggle for the same reasons that indie RPGs struggle, because of the brand recognition and brand loyalty D&D5e has, despite their merit. I don’t watch actual plays, or else I would be able to list more of them. So, anyone who does watch actual plays, please help me out by commenting on this post with some non-D&D5e actual plays you like. And please do me a favor and don’t list actual plays that only play one non-D&D5e system, list ones that go through a variety of systems. The first one I can think of is Tiny Table.

“I can just homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e.”

Even though I want to, I’m not going to try and argue that you can’t actually homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e. Instead, I’m going to ask you why you’re buying two $50 rulebooks just to throw away half the pages. In most other good RPGs, you don’t need to change the rules to make them fun, they’re fun right out the box.

“But homebrewing D&D5e into any kind of game is fun! You can homebrew anything out of D&D5e!”

Firstly, I promise that this is not unique to D&D5e. Secondly, then you would probably have more fun homebrewing a system that gives you a better starting point for reaching your goal. Also, what if I told you that there are entire RPG systems out there that are made just for this? There are RPG systems that were designed for the purpose of being a toolbox and set of materials for you to work with to make exactly the game you want to make. Some examples are GURPS, Savage Worlds, Basic RolePlaying, Caltrop Core, and (as much as I loathe it) PbtA.

“I’m not supporting WotC’s monopoly because I pirate all the D&D5e books.”

Then you’re still not supporting the smaller developers that this monopoly is crushing, either.

Now, here’s the how. Because I promise you, there’s not just one, but probably a dozen other RPGs out there that will scratch your exact itch.

Here’s how to find them. This won’t be a comprehensive list because I’ve already been typing this for like 3 hours already. Those reading this, please go ahead and comment more to help fill out the list.

First, I’m gonna plug one of my own major projects, because it’s my post. The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club. It’s a discord server that treats playing TTRPGs like a book club, with the goal of introducing members to a wide variety of games other than D&D5e. RPGs are nominated by members, then we hold a vote to decide what to read and play for a short campaign, then we repeat. There is no financial, time, or schedule investment required to join this book club, I promise it is very schedule-friendly, because we assign people to different groups based of schedule compatibility. You don’t have to play each campaign, or any campaign, you can just read along and participate in discussion that way. And if you can’t afford to buy the rulebook we’re going to be reading, we will make sure you get a PDF of it for free. That is how committed we are to getting non-D&D5e RPGs into people’s hands. Here is an invite link.

Next, there are quite a few tumblr blogs you can follow to get recommendations shown to you frequently.

@indierpgnewsletter

@indie-ttrpg-of-the-day

@theresattrpgforthat

@haveyouplayedthisttrpg

@indiepressrevolution

Plenty of podcasts, journalists, and youtubers out there do in-depth discussions of different systems regularly, a couple I can think of off the top of my head are:

Storyteller Conclave (I’m actually going to be interviewed live on this show on April 10th!)

Seth Skorkowsky

Questing Beast

The Gaming Table

Rascal News

Lastly, you can just go looking. Browse r/rpg, drivethrurpg.com, indie press revolution, and itch.io.

Now, if you really want to support me and my team specifically Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is going to launch on Kickstarter on April 10th and we need all the help we can get. Set a reminder from the Kickstarter page through this link.

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, there’s plenty of ways to get one!

Subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

Donate to our ko-fi and send us an email with proof that you did, and we’ll email you back with the full Eureka prerelease package with the most updated version at the time of responding! (The email address can be found if you scroll down to the bottom of our website.)

We also have merchanise.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hello!! Do you know any TTRPGs surrounding translation or languages? 😊 (thanks for all your work btw!!!)

THEME: Language / Translation Games

Hello friend! As someone who studied linguistics in university, I absolutely love talking about all of the funky things languages do! I hope these recommendations tickle your fancy!

Dialect, by Thorny Games.

Dialect is a game about an isolated community, their language, and what it means for that language to be lost. In this game, you’ll tell the story of the Isolation by building their language. New words will come from the fundamental aspects of the community: who they are, what they believe in, and how they respond to a changing world.

Dialect uses a deck of cards to help minimize the amount of choices you have to make in character creation, by dealing three cards to each player and having the players choose one from just those three. You track the change of your language over a series of turns, using prompts to help you navigate the conversations that arise in your community as the world around them changes.

Dialect has been very highly regarded as a game that really delivers on the experience that it promises. The grief that accompanies language death really shines through this game, so if you want to combine the wonder of creation with the pain of losing something so integral to your sense of being, this is the game for you.

Tiny Frog Wizards, by @prokopetz

You have mastered the secret arts of sorcery

The very primordial energies of creation and destruction are yours to wield as you will.

You are two inches tall.

Tiny Frog Wizards is a game about tiny frogs, wielding magic using the power of words. When you want to do something magical, you will roll somewhere between 1-3 dice, and use the values of your rolled dice to determine how the range, magnitude, and control of your magic.

What’s important in terms of this game recommendation is the Control aspect, because how well you are able to wield your magic depends on how many words you are able to use to make things happen! It’s a lot easier to use a spell with precision if you have enough words to detail where you want a magical pen to write, or what you want to throw a tiny magic missile at. Not enough words? Then the GM has license to cause some humorous side effects, or, if you roll poorly enough, cause your spells to really go off the rails.

If you like games where you need to choose your words carefully, Tiny Frog Wizards is worth checking out - especially since it’s in free playtest!

Xenolanguage, by Thorny Games.

Xenolanguage is a tabletop role-playing game about first contact with alien life, messy human relationships and what happens when they mix together.  At its core, you explore your pivotal relationships with others on the mission as you uncover meaning in an alien language. The game gives a nod to soulful sci-fi media like Arrival, Story of Your Life and Contact, but tells its own story. It’s a game for 2-4 players in 3-4 hours.

In Xenolangauge, you play as a group of people bound together through a shared past with unsettled questions. Your task is to understand why the aliens have come and what they are trying to tell us. You will soon discover the key to understanding lies in your memories together.

This is definitely an in-person game, as it is meant to come with a modular channeling board that will provide you with alien symbols that you will use to help you interpret messages. This is more than a game about language, it’s about relationship, shared memories, and connection.

Xenolanguage was kickstarted at the beginning of this year, but you can check out the above link to pre-order the game if this sounds interesting to you!

Star-Spawned, by Penguin King Games.

One unearthly night, a ray of colourless light descended from the stars, and under its warping radiance, creatures unlike any the world has ever seen were born. They do not know the world, and they do not know themselves. Unfortunately for the world, they're quick learners!

Star-Spawned is a GMless, oneshot-oriented tabletop RPG in which you don't know what your own traits do when play begins. The names of each group's stats are randomly generated using morpheme chaining, and characters are created while having absolutely no idea what they mean; figuring that out forms the greater part of play.

Star-Spawned is more about self discovery than it is about language, but the use of morpheme-chaining in character creation is intriguing to me. You will randomly roll three pieces of a word, and then chain them together to create a unique Facet, available to the players as stats. These Facets don’t have a meaning when the game begins - you need to play to find out what they mean. If you like playing around with semantics - the meaning of words - this might be a game for you.

Degenerate Semantics, by Mikael Andersson.

Degenerate Semantics is a role-playing game for 1-5 players and one Game Master (GM). The players will each portray a character who live in Emmaloopen's poverty-stricken lower city. They are young, wild, ambitious, and independent. This way of life is threatened by other factions, and the players will need to have their characters work together to survive and thrive.

In the process of playing the game, the players and GM will define and flesh out a language called Bandethal. A collection of street terms and slang, Bandethal is used both as a way to talk openly about illicit activities without alerting authorities and to establish street cred. The terms are liberally mixed in with plain English, or when the language is mature enough, can be used entirely on its own. The characters' success is in large part based on how proficiently the players wield the language.

A friend of mine ran this game for me three or four years ago, and it’s been sitting in the back of my head ever since. Degenerate Semantics was created for a Game Chef competition in 2014, and has remained in the same state since then. I don’t think there’s any more work being done on it, but the game is there for anyone who wants to give it a go - and while there’s a setting that comes with the game, that setting is highly flexible, depending on what your group is interested in. Our group decided to use a lot of gardening metaphors, and undertook a plant-based heist as our act of rebellion! If you want a game about the power that language can give a tightly-knit group, this is the game for you.

I've Also Recommended...

DROWWORD, by Ursidice.

[nykloss]

Ditching D&D Beyond or never got it in the first place? Here's some free/pwyw resources.

Dicecloud. This online app allows you to make and track character sheets for free! It does a lot of the calculations for you, just like dnd beyond would. Best overall replacement. (Thank you, @chryslerisdead)

PWYW Class Character Sheets by Emmet Byrne. These character sheets in my opinion, are easier to fill out and harder to mess up, with class-specific features built-in. You can easily edit them digitally, and there's even multiclass/homebrew options. Slap em on Google drive or something, share with your DM, lots of options.

Point-Buy Calculator. Easily automates character stat creation if you're using the Point-Buy system.

5e Level Up Tool. Select your class, select your level, get a digestible checklist of everything you need to do to level up. This one is SO GOOD and so slept on.

5e Spellbook. A quick way to reference your spells and build a Spellbook with a ton of filters.

Encounter Calculator. I know challenge rating isn't everything, but this is a good/fast way to see how balanced your encounters are, at a glance, at least in the eyes of the source books.

RPGbot. Lots of resources for DMs and players: encounter builders, dpr calculators, and lists of player options with sample builds and optimization suggestions, which may be helpful to folks new to the game.

Bonus: Online Tools (System Agnostic)

Here.fm. This is the alternative I use instead of roll20, because it's faster/easier. Drag and drop in maps and tokens in seconds, built-in library of stickers you can use for effects, draw right on the virtual tabletop, use temporary drawings to map out moves, built-in dice rollers, and options for proximity chat. I use it in combination with discord (just have players join your here room muted), but it could be used entirely on it's own, I imagine. Not built for ttrpgs, but works incredibly well for them.

Kenku.fm. A PWYW mini browser focused on mixing and sharing music to your dnd games through whatever app you use, with helpful discord support. This app also LEGALLY bypasses the issue that got all the YouTube discord bots shut down, so you can share YouTube audio worry-free.

Additional Resources (Aka, stuff I found out about after I originally posted this):

flapkan. Holy shit, this might be the BEST character sheet option on this list! Form-fillable pdfs with fully automated built-in prompts to auto fill features and spells, built-in Point-Buy and other automated calculations, and it generates a lot for you. Can be used digitally or you can print!

[a-very-tired-jew]

Conversations with a younger colleague about I/P conflict

In my department there is a grad student who is friendly with myself and a few others of the openly nerdy ecologists. We actively talk about anime, video games, TTRPGs, etc... We've also all collaborated on research together because we generally study the same thing, and being a grad student we are also letting them helm their own research to carve their own path. The research topic that links all of us is decomposition ecology.

Meaning, we study death, how it effects the environment, and all the things having to do with it. Often we have our own terms that we define and use, but we also work within the framework of various medical and legal definitions nationally and internationally. Recently this student has been talking to me about the I/P conflict because it has dominated their social media feed. Like many young adults, this is their first I/P conflict and their first exposure to anything regarding that region. As such, they have come to me to talk about things knowing that I am Jewish. Not out of maliciousness, but because I am the only person they talk to that has any sort of connection to it. Over these past months they have repeated the "genocide/Holocaust" rhetoric that we have seen Western Activists use to make the conflict the Worst Thing Ever. Our conversation went as follows: GS: I can't believe they're committing a Holocaust on them after what they went through. Me: How is it a Holocaust? GS: They're committing a genocide against the Palestinians. Me: They're not doing either one, but let's touch upon the first thing you said. How? GS: They're killing them in large numbers! Me: Oh...oh...that's not what made the Holocaust the Holocaust, you know that right? It was years of systematic dehumanization that culminated in what we know. There were death camps, torture, experimentation, and so much more than simple "killing in large numbers". GS: Damn public school education... Me: You didn't really go over it too much did you? GS: WWII was, like, a week I want to say. Me: *sigh* yeah, not surprised at all. GS: Okay, so a genocide then? Me: GS, what do we study? GS: Decomp Me: and that involves? GS: Death Me: One avenue of which is mass casualty events which a number of our friends have published on. GS: Yeah! I read those papers, they were really good. Me: They were, but do you remember conversations we had about them and what differentiates mass casualty events from one another? GS: Cause? Me: And...? GS: Shit. Intent. Me: Exactly. Has their been an official stated intent to commit any genocide? I mean, you've got the bigots in the government like Ben Givir and the shit they say, I'll give you that. But has the official stance been genocidal? GS: No. I don't think so. Me: What has it been? GS: To get the hostages back and get rid of Hamas. Me: Uh huh, and what has been Hamas's stated intent? GS: To kill Zionists. Me: And before 2017 when they changed the wording in their charter? GS: ah fuck...it's Jews isn't it? Me: Ding ding ding. GS: So that's why no one in the group has said it's a genocide... Me: Correct. Humanitarian crisis brought about by war? Yes. Mass casualty event? Certainly. But genocide? Well, there's a reason no one in our circle has endorsed the term. And remember, we're considered experts on death. GS: I got puppeted didn't I? Me: Yep. GS: Shit. The only reason this went so well is due to our friendship and mentor/mentee dynamic. They already trust me to not lead them astray, be informed, and address the holes in their knowledge. Hell, they help me be a better scientist as well with how they bring in new and novel techniques that I didn't know. But they're still getting a lot of their info from TikTok and IG, and they've talked about a lot of BS from those two particular apps these past few years. This is just the latest (they had a TikTok induced anti-GMO trend for a while, it was bad).

[tales-from-the-aether-ttrpg]

Something ive noticed about a lot of people who play dnd (myself included) is that… they arent really playing dnd.

I don’t mean that in the - they’ve homebrewed the system to the point where they are basically playing a completely different game. i mean it in the way that dnd is less of a game and more of a tool or frame work to tell improve stories with friends. Thats why so many tables have a significant amount of homebrew rules or play it loose with the rules - because dnd is secondary to the act of telling a story.

Unfortunately, dnd wasn’t built for such a narratively focused sandbox. It was built around dungeons and adventuring and violence in general - an aspect that is only a fraction of many stories that dnd is used to tell.

I think that is why so many people are resistant from trying other ttrpg systems that may give them a better player experience. They dont play dnd to play dnd but they dont even realize that. The game is secondary so why does it matter what game they play? Everyone at their table is already versed in dnd so they can make it work as a framework even if its trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

This is something ive been thinking about a lot while making my ttrpg Tales from the Aether as I am inspecting my own view and experience with dnd and what i enjoy about it versus what could be done better. Why do me and my friends play dnd? To hang out and tell stories. Dnd happens to be the system i knew at the time we started and thus it is the one we used. But there is nothing particular about dnd that supports this goal while there are many things that hold us back - such as characters archetypes and classes being so ridged and having practically zero guidance for running the game outside of combat or adventuring. This is where homebrew comes in.

Ironically thats the entire premise of Tales from the Aether. I started making it years ago with the idea that this system is specifically a framework for people to tell improve stories with friends. That is the whole point. All of the mechanics revolve around giving players the tools to do what they want while the rules act more as a form of in universe world building (like a hard magic system) than actual rules.

The reason why so many people who play dnd are hesitant or straight up refuse to try out other ttrpgs is because the game is secondary. Its a tool. Its a framework that they can build off of to create the experience that they want. Its familiar so they know how to bend it, what parts to chip off or expand, to give them what they want. A new ttrpg, even if its one that gives them everything they want in a ttrpg, is unfamiliar and thus not worth investing in when they already have something that works well enough.

Idk i may be way off base here but from my own experience and from watching live plays and reading people’s takes on dnd and playing the game… thats kinda the conclusion ive come to.

[keplercryptids]

if you've never considered playing anything other than D&D 5e, now might be the time to start.

as you may have heard, Wizards of the Coast wrote up a new Open Game License that was leaked and it's really, really bad. (i linked to the article about it yesterday but here's a twitter thread of the author of that article summarizing it.)

i'll attempt my own breakdown of what this means here:

the new OGL revokes the previous OGL. this is bad for so many reasons, and will affect all kinds of TTRPGs like Pathfinder, and third-party publishers like Kobold's Press.

it also means that character sheets wouldn't be able to be used in unauthorized virtual table tops anymore, including Roll20, Foundry, etc.

the new OGL grants WotC a perpetual, irrevocable license to all third-party content produced and published under the old OGL, as well as future content. for example, if WotC hypothetically liked Dimension 20's Unsleeping City setting enough, it could sell products related to that setting, without needing D20's permission.

the new OGL can be updated, changed or revoked with only 30 days' notice. truly wild.

anybody who makes more than $750k revenue (not profit, but revenue) has to pay 20-25% over that amount in royalties to WotC. this will affect so many kickstarters raising funds for indie TTRPG systems that used to fall under the original OGL. $750k sounds like a lot but keep in mind publishing books is expensive.

this is really, really bad. WotC will probably go back on some of this based on public response, and a lawsuit may make them go back on even more. (some of what they're trying to do here is illegal? i think?) but they'll likely still push forward with some of it.

it seems WotC's goal is to 1) appease shareholders (which in late-stage capitalism means "exponential growth forever") and 2) create a closed ecosystem for d&d that's completely under WotC's financial control. think: D&D Beyond being the only place you can access any D&D content, character sheets, etc. and i mean, in general, they've shown a pattern of greed and weighing corporate interests more heavily than their customers or employees.

now would be a great time to move away from d&d if you've ever considered doing so, or to consider it if you haven't.

if you want something similar to d&d 5e mechanically but a bit crunchier, try pathfinder 2e. if you want narrative-focused storytelling games, try Powered by the Apocalypse or FATE systems. if you want a mechanics-forward episodic style of play, try Forged in the Dark systems. if you want a cross-genre game with freeform character creation, try Savage Worlds. and this is an extreme short list of the great TTRPGs out there! a lot of systems that, IMO, people would have more fun playing than d&d, just based on preferred style of play. try them out and please don't give WotC anymore money lol.

[utilitycaster]

okay watched Cloak and Dagger and here are my thoughts in brief

I don't think showing Ripley's backstory is bad. Part of why Ripley is an interesting character to me in a way that, to use my favorite punching bag, Otohan, is not, is because we had hints of what made her this way - fleeing the Empire; a list of names on Animus that included Bertrand Dwendal. Part of why I mock Otohan relentlessly is because she is a one-dimension villain, and Ripley never was that, which is why she's an interesting villain. Tragic backstory, in my opinion, enhances one's villainy, rather than reduces it: what sort of monster suffers and decides to do the same to others, rather than is driven to work to improve the lot of others? That's essentially why Caleb is in the end a heroic character and Ludinus is the culminating BBEG more so than Predathos.

Glintshore is one of my favorite battles of Campaign 1 and it also would not, in my opinion, translate well to animation. There was a great line in the Midst Messages from Xen in reference to Moonward about how in most rules-heavy TTRPGs, when you enter a big battle, time stretches out significantly, but in a systemless game like Moonward, it goes very quickly, which gives it a very different vibe and makes players make very different decisions. The emotional weight derives largely from how the party enters combat already heavily drained and never regains their footing, and how the cast is well aware and the sense of dread (and belief that Percy might be permanently dead and Taliesin will have to roll up a new character) sets in long before the battle ends. [long tangent about good parasocial vs bad parasocial in actual play put off until I have time to actually read Watch Us Roll, but this is Good Parasocial]. It's actually an interesting test of the challenge we face for the finale of the series: you are not going to get as efficient an emotional punch as Sam saying "Nine" in a show that doesn't have a concept of spell levels. I had struggled with how one might recreate the Glintshore battle and the answer is "you don't".

Ripley's speech was great no notes, love her being fucking awful and consumed with vengeance to the end. I think just as the theme of "your resentment will destroy you" is an enduring one throughout Critical Role, so is "every mortal is in theory someone who could change and become better, but if you shoot the hand that's trying to help you, well, get rekt lol"

The music over Percy's death is corny as hell. However, I am already on the record as someone who mutes It's Thursday Night for being corny as hell and who pokes fun at Matt's more purple prose and I seem to have stuck around regardless. I have made my peace with the fact that a good chunk of the cast spent their formative years just absolutely immersed in anime, and given the Extreme Anime Vibes of Percy in TLOVM I can't say I love it, but I also can't say it's not sort of fitting. Please do cut that scene with different music though, because it would be funny as shit.

I need to watch episodes 8 and 9 (going to now!) but much as I love the glintshore fight, you know what I love more? Episode 1x69 (nice). Real Tragedy Enjoyers know the proof is in the aftermath. If 8 and 9 also suck then I'll be back here in like an hour but if they're good then it's whatever.

Grog is always on some level experiencing a Sitcom B Plot and if you ever find yourself disliking a TLOVM episode, remember you're watching a sitcom where Grog is dealing with a Bird that is Very Here (metaphorical).

[rollerska8er]

This is kinda old news at this point but I can't stress enough how weird people were about Aabria Iyengar in the first season of Misfits and Magic.

To wit: There is a scene, which was made into a YouTube Shorts clip, in which Brennan Lee Mulligan's player character, Evan Kelmp, is overheard by another character who says "Hey, I can hear you!" Brennan, as Evan, responds "No, no you didn't." To which Aabria, in character as the NPC, responds "You know what we aren't gonna do? I'll whoop your ass. You're not gonna gaslight me." It's a funny scene and played off well by Brennan who is clearly blindsided by Aabria's response (which, again, is in-character).

There is no way to describe the reaction to this moment other than "bizarrely racist". The comments on the YouTube Short paint a picture of Aabria as a crazy person who is unnecessarily aggressive to poor sweet Brennan, just because he said no, the poor lamb. These people read Aabria's in-character reaction to Brennan's joking, in-character refusal to yes-and as an actual accusation of gaslighting from Aabria to Brennan.

People then go on to be outraged that she refused Brennan a deception check (which he did not ask for, and also isn't really possible in the narrative-driven system they're playing because guess what, not all TTRPGs are D&D). The implication is that Aabria is a nasty, unnecessarily aggressive GM who creates an uncomfortable, abusive and oppressive atmosphere around her table.

Except, of course, this isn't what is happening in the clip at all. Aabria is smiling throughout, as is Brennan. Nobody is visibly uncomfortable. Brennan's character becomes flustered by the interaction, but he is supposed to be socially awkward. Did any of these armchair critics bother to learn the context for the scene before making a snap judgement about the GM? Of course not.

Why do I make the racism accusation? Well, because Brennan has also been known to react to PCs goofing around with the same kind of stern, in-character finger-wagging. See Emily Axford-as-Fig's interactions with Goldenhoard and other authority figures, for example.

Were the roles reversed, and Aabria tried to blatantly lie her way out of an interaction with one of Brennan's NPCs only to be told, in-character, "You're not gonna lie to me", I have a feeling the reaction would not be quite as strongly negative.

It is impossible to read the reactions casual viewers had to this moment as anything but specifically racist and misogynist. These people saw a black woman even in roleplay assert a boundary and concluded that she was being aggressive to a white male player for no reason.

I'm just thinking about this now as the second season of Misfits and Magic is currently being released. Of course, it's clear that Brennan and Aabria are good friends and have GMed for each other on and off camera. But I just keep thinking about how fucking uncharitable people were to Aabria two years ago and it does really concern me how normalised this is in TTRPG spaces.

I hope the production team are taking steps to care for their talent because honestly, a small but vocal minority of D20 fans and quite a lot of wider casual actual play fans can be really fucking horrible at times.

[snuurp]

introduction to the WORMS IN MY BRAIN jk this is a modern fantasy au for baldurs gate 3 plain text and more info under the cut

intro to the au, forewarning i haven't done much research, and my first playthrough of the game isn't done yet (I AM in act three tho I swear 2/3rds of the three guys r dealt with and so is cazador.) keep in mind i have no idea what i'm doing.

the mindflayer stuff is like. an experimental implant they all dubiously agreed to without all the info. extra enhancements (like the other tadpoles in game) are like drugs, and they appear once weekly at everyone's doors whether they want it or not. initial implant stabilizes Karlach's engine, helps with Astarion's vampire stuff, etc. etc. and the extras just feel good to use, it's addictive.

all of them are in a support group together meant to encourage them to stay clean from the extra tadpoles. time they've spent with the group varies.

there WILL be more detailed posts for them later, i have a lot of thoughts on Karlach and Wyll especially. implied/possible shadowzel and wyllstarion. my tav will be present, this is very self indulgent and i am in lesbians with Karlach.

plain text for images:

KARLACH

6'11" - 7'

construction worker.

her first job was disastrous.

foreman Goretash pushed her into dangerous situations that she felt pressured to be in because she was the newbie.

things went wrong with the electrical on the job site, landing her in the hospital with a near-fatal heart problem.

but good* news! avernus co. offered her a mechanical heart for the low, low price of a ten year work contract! (strings attached.)

she's out of the contract now, and avernus co. is refusing to maintain her heart (and the other "upgrades" they gave her without consent.)

still in construction, unionized and a loud advocate for workers rights.

can't do caffeine. her coffee order is a creamy chocolate chill from TImothy Horthingtons.

favourite board game is ticket to ride or uno, surprisingly mean and competitive in games.

SHADOWHEART

5'6"

works at hot topic (emo)

just got out of the commune, full swing edgy phase and does NOT know how un-niche her music is yet (please don't tell her)(she might cry)

"adopted" by Shar's cult when she was little, doesn't remember much before or after that beyond what other members told her.

dissecting her faith.

roommates with Lae'zel. (they hate each other)

"roommates" with Lae'zel also. (they still hate each other) (kinda)

rps her fursona COOL CAT CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL online.

very afraid of wolves which does include sparkledogs and makes rp super difficult.

her favourite board game is catan or any ttrpg.

if asked, her coffee order is "black, like my tortured soul" but she actually gets a vanilla latte with extra syrup and sweet foam. (oat milk because regular makes her tummy hurt)

LAE'ZEL

5'7" and gods does she ever hold that extra inch over Shadowheart.

works as a personal trainer, her clients are scared of her which makes her VERY effective for the right people.

insults clients, perfectionist.

mommy issues x100

the creche has a very community/it takes a village style of raising but they do a really bad job.

she wants to be the BEST of her siblings, doesn't take failure well.

loves competitive solo sports, hiking, marathons, bouldering, boxing, etc. etc.

delights in pushing Shadowheart's buttons.

she doesn't drink coffee, her order is a smoothie.

willingly drinks the ones with kale like a CRAZY PERSON.

favourite board game is chess and while she is good at it she is a SORE loser.

WYLL

6'1"

used to work for avernus co. and now works a much quieter, mostly Mizora-free job at an elementary school.

the students favourite gym teacher.

estranged from his dad after a huge, explosive misunderstanding re: the very un-HR Mizora incident(s)

likes Go Fish and cribbage, but he's happy playing any board game the others suggest.

generally just happy to be here.

coffee of choice is an americano with a shot of apple cinnamon syrup.

loves knitting.

definitely not crushing on Astarion whaaat crazyyyy.....

his watch is from his dad. he looks at it when he misses him.

misses him a lot.

ASTARION

5'9"

former troubled teen kicked out by his rich parents.

Cazador was a "pastor" that took him under his wing and adopted him into his group home (for a price)

in debt to him now and can't outrun it.

has two jobs.

works at Olive Garden, HATES IT.

works at (insert coffee shop chain here) ALSO HATES IT.

somehow has a very popular aesthetic tumblr blog in the year of our lord 20XX

coffee order is an iced caramel latte (sometimes gets strawberry/cherry/raspberry syrup to make his pictures cooler)

his favourite board game is monopoly (he steals from the bank) but he DESPISES cheaters edition because that "takes all the fun out of it"

Wyll's feelings are mutual and he knows about them but he's too insecure to talk to Wyll about it (nerd)

GALE

5'11"

unemployed, formerly university librarian/professor.

is not over his ex, will not be over his ex for the foreseeable future.

eventually goes to a new university to teach tho.

zero rizz, this man uses mage hand to play wizard wonderwall while concentrating very hard and that makes him look constipated sorry Gale likers.

has a part time job at a Barnabus and Noblemans before going to the new university.

commissioned Wyll to make his sweater vest in affront-to-the-gods purple.

wrote some very prolific papers in the wizard community.

coffee order is matcha or a mocha

favourite board game is clue. he gets really into it.

[3liza]

Do you write? Where can I read something you wrote? :)

I'm really bad at updating my CV so I'm forgetting a lot of stuff but I wrote for most of the main "gaming news and journalism" websites during the 2000s and also worked on Unhallowed Metropolis the TTRPG in a bunch of roles, including a chapter in the soucebook. one of the more recent ones was Headcase which was an anthology by Oxford Press, which was an honor, i think it was about queer mental health? also my book Problem Glyphs has an essay in it, that's sold by Strix (publisher). I had some stuff in Thick As Thieves in Seattle that I was proud of but fuck that paper it was run by a psychopath. uhhhh I unfortunately started a short fiction series with Warren Ellis way before all the reports about him came out, called Deep Map Pilots, I think some of that is on this blog and searchable. Cafe Racer Anthology about Dune called Dune, I'm not sure if it's searchable or purchasable. I was in Lightspeed Magazine's special issue (or maybe it was another anthology) called Queers Destroy Science Fiction. Short story in Conclave Journal's 2010 or 2011 issue.

i'm a shit promoter of my writing honestly it's not really something I have been actively pursuing recently because it pays peanuts and I just haven't felt like writing as much as pursuing other stuff. i really only publish when someone asks me specifically or contacts my business manager lol. I've been thinking about trying to find a publisher for a poetry chapbook I've already completed and formatted but the poetry market is...well it's exactly what you would expect. borderline impossible to publish, much less sell, unless you have some sort of brand name going in, which I do not, at least in a way that would help sell poetry.

i started a short story I really liked based on the Clarksworld published list of "most common words used in titles of stories submitted to Clarksworld Magazine" more as a joke than anything but I've been thinking about cleaning it up and submitting it. it was kind of an exercise in "how do I take these extremely worn out title words and do something I think is fresh with them" and sort of as a little joke to submit to them. i think it's probably something they would maybe consider printing if the issue was right for it, I'm not sure though.

[anim-ttrpgs]

The Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy October 17th Beta update has launched today on itch.io for free!

Happy Halloween! We pulled out all the stops just to get the update out in time for you to prep and play it for your group’s Halloween game! The free adventure module that comes with it, “Horror Harry’s Haunted House”, takes place on Halloween after all! In it, your investigators will solve a “murder mystery” in a charmingly spooky haunted house escape room. It serves as a sort of investigation and survival training ground for you and your PCs to learn the ropes before jumping into more Call-of-Cthulhu-esque adventures where death is around every corner. (You can even get two more adventure modules over on our patreon)

Download the new rulebook here on itch.io! Even if you download it for free, just checking it out, talking about it, reblogging this post, etc. helps us out immensely. We are a diverse, largely queer team setting out to slay a dragon, we’ve already been working on this for four years, and we need all the community support we can get!

If you’re wondering what Eureka even is, watch this trailer, or read this post if you don't wanna watch a video.

If you’ve ever tried to run a murder mystery in D&D, what you really needed was Eureka.

If you’re coming from the August beta release, which I assume you are, lemme tell you that a lot has been improved. I’ll go over some of the highlights, and post the full changelog under the cut. It’s still free, but if you could throw a bit of money out way on the itchio page, even if you’ve paid before, that would be a massive, massive help. We’re actually a bit over budget even with the relative success of the Kickstarter, plus for one of us this is their primary source of income.

Trait Overhaul

There’s a few new Traits, and nearly every single existing Trait has been redone to make them better and/or more interesting. Each Trait will now have an even more significant effect on your gameplay experience.

Combat Overhaul + World's Best Grappling Rules

Combat in Eureka is now better than ever, and it was already really good - plus, now you can actually comprehend the dang rules! The previous combat rules, I admit, were a dense and confusing slog to read through, even if they worked really well once you understood them. Now, thanks to our editor, you can understand them! Instead of being split across four chapters, it’s now just two chapters. One chapter explains weapons and is mostly just for stat reference, and the other chapter is focused on telling you everything your character can do during “dangerous situations,” which are not just combat, but really just any kind of scenario where a character can get hurt. As a special highlight to the combat overhaul, Eureka now boasts the first ever set of grappling rules that are viable, realistic, and fun to employ at the table! I’m serious when I say I have never seen them done like this before, and think they offer an actual leap forward in something that TTRPGs have struggled with since early editions of D&D! I also put a lot of my own judo and other martial arts experience to work here.

Monster Overhaul

A lot of what I said about the pre-overhaul combat sections of the rulebooks were also true of the monster PC rules. They were dense, hard to reference, and disorganized. Well not anymore! All six playable monsters in Eureka have been completely rewritten using the skills I have gained as a game designer since first writing them, and, like the regular Traits, they have all been at the very least tweaked to be more interesting and have a greater effect on gameplay, and some have been changed entirely with all new subsystems! Witches brew potions now, fairies actually have stuff to do with the names they collect, and more! Plus, speaking of Traits, every monster can have more regular Traits now, to really help flesh out their personality!

CHANGE LOG 

Copy-editing Progress: Thoroughly copy-edited up to p. 302. Half-ass copy-edited up to p. 322.

WHOLE BOOK

Stuck most of the $42+ kickstarter backer submission info into the very back of the book just to get it out of our email inbox and to allow the whole team to be able to more easily see it and work with it. Going to be doing more to integrate this stuff into the actual rulebook soon. 

Changed the headings to hopefully be more legible. Please give us feedback on what you think of this change.

CHAPTER 1

Changed the limitations on how Comfort is used to restore investigator Composure. 

Fixed a typo in the investigation example of play. 

Made it so that Composure rolls for fears in the “Ridiculous” category don’t even always need to be rolled when these things are encountered. 

Moved Character Health and Status, Grievous Wounds, Healing, and Healing Example sections to Chapter 1. 

Changed Partial Incapacitation to give -2 modifiers instead of -1. 

Overhauled the rules for injuries, incapacitation, and grievous wounds completely. A ton of it is changed. 

Added codified rules for medical facilities and what to do in the case of investigator death. 

Added “The Creeps” optional rule. 

Tweak to When is the Party “Split” section regarding how long to go before jumping between groups.

Lots of new art has been added.

Tweaks to Be Prepared to Lose section.

—---------------------------------------------------

Additions to the What is Eureka For section

Changed comforting factors and exacerbating factors for Composure rolls to be +/-2 instead of +/-1 so they make a real difference.

New snoop

Changed the font of the section headings in the Ticking Clock section. Let us know what you think of these headings compared to the other headings, because we are considering changing all the headings to be like this.  

Better clarified some stuff about how Ticks work when an adventure starts at some random time of day.

—-------------------------------------

More art has been added

Made travel take more time and matter more

CHAPTER 2

Changed the CQC skill to Close Combat, as this is more clear and obvious what that means at a glance

Made lots of copy-editing progress. Many paragraphs are shorter and convey the rules more clearly. 

Changed the way the Burnout Trait works. It now causes the investigator to lose flat Composure each day rather than affecting their Composure rolls. 

Changed the Death Wish Trait to not suck.

Changed the Elementary! Trait to use Visual Calculus instead of Social Cues.

Changed Go With Your Gut Trait to not suck. 

Added that wallets and like basic clothing and stuff have a WP cost of 0

Added glasses to item list

Added rope to item list

Added hand warmers to item list

Changed Arithmomania trait to where it only gives a +1 base bonus to Paperwork, and the bonus for having a lower Ignorance of Quantity Tiers of Fear rating is more investigation points. 

Changed Femme Fatale to add a +1 Seduce bonus instead of +2. 

Totally redid the Hardy Trait. 

Added -1 modifier to I’m Okay You’re Okay Trait

Redid the Just Built Different Trait. Now it allows a character “no sell” an incoming Superficial Damage attack once per Scene, reducing the damage to 0, among a few other things. 

Added Renaissance Man Trait. 

Removed Love Me Trait. Might try to reword it another time, but it was too similar to too many other traits and wasn't very interesting. 

Completely reworked Lover Trait. 

Many new snoops have been added.

Changed the Mad Genius trait to be called Lovecraft Protagonist and changed what it does. 

Removed the investigation point cap on Man of Action Trait. Also changed the name to Ask Questions Later. 

Changed My Glasses Trait to only provide bonuses to Knowledge Skill Investigative Rolls. 

Changed Nightstalker Trait so that it provides a bonus to all Interpersonal Rolls while trespassing 

Changed None of My Business Trait to suck less.

Changed Not Finished Yet Trait to suck less.

Changed Showboater Trait to suck less.

Changed Skeptic Trait to suck less.

Smalls is now a real Trait instead of just a joke Trait. 

Removed the +1 Bonus from the Unpredictable Trait.

Changed Wicked Trait to not suck. 

Changed Wizened Trait to suck less. 

Woo-Woo Trait no-longer based on Blacked Out Skill. 

Moved “Deadly Combat, Permanent Consequences” here and changed the title to “Disabilities are Disabling”

Changed Basic Physical Therapy on the Wealth Point Item List from 3WP to 2WP. 

Added new section “People Change”

Made Blissfully Ignorant trait immune to “The Creeps.”

Made the Technically… Trait have a +2 bonus instead of +1.

Updated the Hard Boiled Trait to work with the new way that injuries and incapacitation works.

Moved the Hardened Hearts snoop to be the Wicked snoop instead. 

Changed “Empath” Trait to be “Empathetic” instead. 

Made “Did You Know…” a better and more usable Trait

Made Hard Under Pressure a better and more usable Trait.

Changed how the WP cost of an item affects the modifier for rolling for it in-adventure. The modifier is now half the WP cost rounded down. 

—--------------------------------------------------------

Gave a proper name to the Wealth modifier attached to certain homes and vehicles, it is now called the Property Modifier(PM).

Lowered the price of firearm ammunition by 1WP

Lowered the price of desktop computers by 1WP

Lowered the price of cameras by 1WP

Combined various hand tools into one entry on the item lists and moved them to Misc.

Made hotels something that is prepaid in WP similar to food budget. 

Made Large Apartment less expensive and Tiny Apartment more expensive

Moved Baseball Bat and Axe out of Weapons and into Misc. 

Changed how Food Budget works.

Removed Net Skill Limit mechanic entirely

Edit to the duration of the bonuses for Femme Fatale

Changed Ninja Trait to a +2 bonus instead of +1

—----------------------------------------------------------

Made “Sleep On It” Trait give 1D6-1 investigation points, and still give Composure.

Added “Real Capybara Hours.” Sometimes jokes are just for us.

Added animals to item lists

CHAPTER 3

Moved the section “Deadly Combat, Permanent Consequences” into chapter 2. 

More art has been added.

Moved Character Health and Status, Grievous Wounds, Healing, and Healing Example sections to Chapter 1. 

—------------------------------------------------

Changed the name of Chapter 3 to “Dangerous Situations.” We are planning to put all the combat and other dangerous stuff into one chapter called “Dangerous Situations” and merge combat, chases, etc. into one thing rather than splitting it up and having it in a bunch of different chapters.

Made it so that the Speed mechanic works with Theater of the Mind as well, and removed that other awkward mechanic with rolling Athletics for how many turns it takes for a character to cross a large distance. 

Complete restructure of the way the mechanics for movement and action are explained, as well as defining things as both Movements and Actions. 

Created a Chapter 2.5. In the future when we are ready to shift the chapter numbers, Chapter 2.5 will become the new Chapter 3 and the current Chapter 3 will become Chapter 4. Chapter 2.5 currently houses the statistics of weapons and other combat items. The plan is that a first-time reader will read the weapon statistics in Chapter 2.5 before they read the combat rules in Chapter 3, which will inform the way they understand Chapter 3. 

Changed damage value and special attributes of pepper spray. 

Made brass knuckles do 1 penetrative damage. 

Made stun guns do 2 superficial damage.

Made it so that bulletproof vests do protect against 1-damage weapons. 

Moved and rearranged like everything from chapters 3-6. 

Close range bonus for guns is now +2 instead of +1

Simplified Stopping Power rules (the actual way it works has not changed, we just rewrote it so that it gives the same mechanics in like a tenth of the word count)

Separated open-faced helmets and full-face helmets, and made it so that wearing a helmet along with body armor gives a -1 penalty to incoming attack rolls. 

“Single Load” is now called “Internal Magazines”

Shotguns at extremely close range now have similar stopping power to a rifle, but at 5-10 yards they still have their double stopping power. 

Changed how Rate of Fire works for guns. Just making it a number instead of distinct actions. 

Made it so that Quick Cycling affects basically all guns except automatics, meaning characters with high Firearms skill can now fire semi-automatic pistols at 3 bullets per Action.

Streamlined Stabilization. It is no-longer a roll and instead a penalty that worsens the more bullets are being fired at once. 

Made Bipods give +2 Contextual bonus instead of +1 to single stationary targets.

Changed Reactions and made them more broadly applicable and usable as a rule.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overhauled Grabs, Throws, Holds, and Escapes to make them a viable option in a lot more scenarios.

Defined “On the Ground” and made it its own section.

Made knock out blows and throws ignore Armor. Knock-out blows are still somewhat penalized by helmets.

Added A Real John Woo Film Optional Rule

More art has been added

Hastily updated the random chase obstacle tables for the new Movement/Action system.

Updated the example obstacles to be more in line with how we designed obstacles for the obstacle tables. 

Redid how Poison works. We meant to make it less convoluted but accidentally made it more granular instead. We did write it better so it will at least feel less convoluted. 

CHAPTER 4

Merged this chapter with chapter 3

CHAPTER 5

merged this chapter with chapter 3

CHAPTER 6

merged this chapter with chapter 3

CHAPTER 7

Added “Psychological Warfare” mechanic. 

—--------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER 8

The Blacked Out Skill has been changed in two major ways. First we made it more obvious that the Blacked Out Skill applies even to knowledge of the supernatural that is not necessarily true. And also rather than working the way that every other Knowledge skill works, the Blacked Out Skill now gives leads to where answers might be found rather than immediate concrete answers. 

THE GORGON IS FINISHED AND FULLY PLAYABLE!

Added that Alt. Witches have to make their supernatural ability composure rolls at +0 instead of +3. The +3 was a typo.

Started work on the complete monster overhaul.

Vampires have been completely rewritten. Most of their abilities and themes are the same, but the way the abilities work has been overhauled and improved in many cases, as well as now being formatted and structured in a sane and easily-referenceable way. 

More art has been added. 

Changed the +2 Contextual Close Combat bonus for the Werewolf Trait to a +1 Base Bonus

Wolfmen have been completely rewritten. Most of their abilities and themes are the same, but the way the abilities work has been overhauled and improved in many cases, as well as now being formatted and structured in a sane and easily-referenceable way. 

Fairytale Witch is currently being rewritten/overhauled. 

Changed Incredible Strength Mage Trait to have a +2 Close Combat bonus instead of +3.

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Clarified that gorgon blood does not heal gorgons.

Changed the way that monsters interact with Composure and their Tiers of Fear during the act of preying on other people. Instead of just ignoring it or having a bonus (i somehow left both of those conflicting rules in and no one told me), a relevant Composure roll is still made when a monster eats someone, but they do not lose Composure points from it even in the event of Partial Success or Failure. This keeps the narrative benefit of a Composure roll to show the monster’s emotional state, but without making hunting numerically pointless.

Finished the complete fairytale witch overhaul. 

Made the Close Combat bonus for superhuman strength be just +1 for the vast majority of instances. The only exception is wolfman forms. They get a higher Close Combat bonus because their transformations actually make them bigger and taller and this helps a lot in Close Combat.

Reduced Athletics bonus of Incredible Strength trait to +2. 

Merged the Alt. Witch with Mage, and made Mage a Misc. supernatural category instead of its own separate thing. This is going to be a really messy transition for chapter 8 so please bear with us. I am making a brief run though the chapter to clean up the biggest discrepancies this change creates, but I probably won’t get them all until the editor and I have time to actually go through and copy-edit it. 

“Mage” is now its own trait, and what were previously called “mage traits” are now called “mage powers”. Mages now have between 1 and 6 mage powers as part of their mage trait, with worse composure rolls the more powers they have. 

When they engage in their True Nature, monsters now have a chance to recoup some or all of the Composure they lost as a result of using their powers to hunt prey. 

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fully overhauled the fairy rules. Just one more monster to overhaul! Woo! 

Changed the Curse of Slumber to take effect the next time the victim falls asleep rather than knocking them out spontaneously.

Overhauled the changeling rules to go along with the overhauled fairy rules. 

Clarified something about the vampire’s In Lizard Fashion ability, they wouldnt be able to use this to stop a speeding truck.

Removed the hard limit on how many people a wolfman could eat at once, and also added rules for what happens if they shift to a smaller form with people in their stomach. Made similar tweaks for vampires. 

More art has been added 

Fully overhauled the Thing from Beyond, and that completes the full monster overhaul. All Monsters now consist of a single Trait, rather than needing a pair of Traits. 

Gave vampires’ “wearing the evening” ability a maximum distance of 50 yards and also it is a Movement now 

Made a few more adjustments to some of the monster sections to bring them up to date with the new Movement/Action mechanics. 

Adjusted all instances of poison in the monster sections to account for the new poison rules.

[theresattrpgforthat]

How To Find Cool Games: On DriveThruRPG!

So disclaimer upfront: I don’t use the DriveThruRPG website nearly as much as Itch.io. Some of those reasons are practical (there’s no tagging system, the catalogue is rather D&D saturated,), while others are more… well, shallow (the website isn’t as pretty).

However, DriveThruRPG is a very good tool to have in your toolbox when it comes to finding cool ttrpgs, for a number of reasons, the primary one being that it’s for TTRPGS and only TTRPGs! Let’s get started.

The Search Bar / Categories.

You can start by doing a basic search for a game that you already know about, or by searching for a keyword, like “pirates” or “zombies”. You’ll get titles sorted by “relevance”, so things that have the keyword in the name will show up first. One of the biggest downsides of this strategy is that everything kind of gets lumped in here: supplements, maps, expansions, adventures, character sheets… the list goes on. However, you can narrow down what you’re looking for by using the toggles at the top of the website. I personally usually narrow down search results by selecting “Product Type” and then “Core Rulebooks”.

One nice thing DriveThru has compared to Itch.io is that you can combine categories, so if I wanted to brows say, Gothic Horror Core Rulebooks priced under $20, well I can do that! My favourite categories are for genre, but another set of categories that you may find very useful once you’ve familiarized yourself with some games is the Rule System category. There are categories for systems like the Year Zero Engine, Forged in the Dark, BRP (Basic Roleplaying), OSR, and so much more. There’s also “other systems” and “any system” categories if you want to find something that’s unique or that can be used across games.

DriveThru also has a lot of games published in different languages, and you can narrow your results to see what’s been offered in your language. I think there are more options on this website than there are on Itch, although you might benefit by finding one or two publishers in your language on DriveThru, and then check the publisher’s website from there.

The Homepage

Another reason to check out DriveThru regularly is the sales and promotions. The top banner of the homepage will typically advertise a few things: the Deal of the Day, current themed sales, and special offers that DriveThru RPG wants you to know about. Their homepage also has Bestselling Titles, Most Popular Games Under $5, Newest Games, Featured Titles, and, if you scroll down enough, Personalized suggestions. Unlike Itch.io, DriveThru does a lot of work to show you what’s new, what’s hot, and what’s a really good deal right now, which can all be really helpful things!

When you land on a game, you’ll be able to see whether or not DriveThru sells physical copies, some basic information like book size, rule system, publisher & author, and a blurb describing the setting and other general information about the game. DriveThru has a side panel with “Customers also Bought”, which is great for showing you things that you might like, either because they surround the same theme, they work for the same game, or they are in a similar genre. (Another thing that Itch isn’t quite as good at.)

You’ll also be able to see (and leave) reviews for game, including the ratings left by other people who have picked it up. Occasionally I’ll find really useful information in the reviews, as reviewers might talk about mechanics they love or loathe, or recommend styles of play that they feel the game matches.

Finally, like Itch, DriveThru will let you know if you’ve already bought the game, and provide you with a download shortcut.

Publishing House Pages

Larger publishing houses typically have their ttrpg content sorted very nicely for you on their publisher pages, to help you find the things that you want. Modiphius is a great example, sorting Star Trek, Dune, Fallout, and their 2d20 games all in special categories.

Many publishers also have a Community Content section, which is great if you’re looking for assets, new adventures, hacks of a game system and some very reasonably priced (or even cheap) game additions. Similar to Itch, DriveThru has a Pay-What-You-Want feature for many games, although, unlike Itch, most PWYW titles require that you pay a non-zero amount.

Newsletters

When you create an account on DriveThruRPG, you can sign up for various different kinds of newsletters. Some come directly from DriveThru itself: this includes the Follow Your Favourites and Deal of the Day options, as well as weekly/monthly newsletters carrying information about new releases, special promotions, and (often) a free ttrpg product of the month.

However, on top of that, when you purchase a game or follow publishing pages, you can also get emails about new releases specific to those creators, as well as updates if a new version of a game you bought has been added. Often if it’s a game you already bought, this means you own the new version too - something that DriveThru has in common with Itch!

The Follow Your Favourites announcements will line up with whatever you’ve chosen to follow on the website. I’ve asked for updates about new Core Rulebooks, and I also get updates from the Onyx Path and a few other places where I found games I really liked. I also check the Deal of the Day offers fairly regularly; sometimes there are really really good deals offered and if it’s a game you know or like, then you don’t want to miss out on a sale!

Wishlists

DriveThru allows you to add games to wishlists to look at later, and even gives you the ability to sort your wishlists, although the process feels harder to look through than Itch does; I think it might be a UI issue.

However, because it acts like a wishlist, you can move games from the wishlist into your cart and vice versa, as well as move the games to another list. One really nice thing about the wishlist section is that DriveThru will alway show you when something you want is on sale, and how much it is normally - Itch does this too, but in this case, DriveThru is much easier to read!

I mostly sort my wishlists into Core Rulebooks and Supplements, because I don’t have nearly as many games bookmarked on DriveThru. If it exists on Itch, I store it on Itch - but there are plenty of other, “someday’ games, that I want to be able to find again in the future.

Your Library

DriveThruRPG has an app that you can download onto your computer or your phone, and it basically acts as a library that you can look through. In both the webpage and the app, you can sort your purchases alphabetically, from new to old, by publisher, by whether or not they were updated, and using similar categories as the search bar on the store front.

Free things can definitely be found here, even if they’re harder to look for. On DriveThru, most free products are things like character sheets, playtest games, or Quickstarts. However, some publishers do put up their stuff for free. Whenever I can get a Quickstart of something interesting, or if I find something being offered for free, I add it to my library. Free games are how I got started in ttrpgs, and QuickStarts are wonderful introductions to a system that usually give you a good idea of what the game is going to feel like.

Conclusion

Overall, DriveThruRPG is great for folks who like certain big publishing houses, and folks who like a good deal. I personally usually end up on the site because something in my emails caught my eye, which is the opposite of how I navigate Itch. DriveThru was my home base before I discovered Itch.io, so I still have a little fondness for the website, even if looking through it is a little bit of a slog.

One thing that might be a bit of an annoyance is that if you own something from a certain company, they might be able to send you a lot of emails for every sale and new product. If this becomes too much, you can choose to opt out from those publishers.

If you don’t want to have to actively engage with the website as much as say, Itch, DriveThru’s email system is also a big help. You can customize your subscriptions to match what you’re interested in, and then just check your emails once in a while to see what’s on offer. After a while you’ll also learn about yearly events, like the Summer Sale, which often provides big discounts on a lot of different games.

DriveThru is also a great place to start if you’re looking for print versions of games: I don’t know what shipping is like to places outside Canada, but I definitely appreciate that it’s an option, and sometimes all you need to do is find a game or publisher - once you know that it exists, you can google that publisher, check out their website, and figure out the best place to order from there.

[rockdwarftv]

So, you wanna play a Pokémon TTRPG

But you don't have the time to manage 1K entries in a book? Well, I'm working on the thing for you! PokéD6.

Now that I've show you my character sheet concept, let me break down some of the things on it. The biggest thing anyone will notice right away is the lack any numbered stats. This system converts existing BSTs (Base Stat Totals) into a 6 point grade. Above, each black diamond (✦) represents one point of that stat's grade. And any pre-existing pokemon can have it's BST quickly converted by simply dividing any given stat's total by 36 and rounding up, to a max of 6! Each grade also has an associated number of dice, which are always equal to the grade itself, and an associated modifier. A stat's modifier is equal to it's grade plus it's IVs. IVs, represented by the hollow diamonds (✧), have also been simplified down into a single dice roll per stat. So, whenever you capture a new pokemon, roll 6d6. Like with stat grades, each diamond represents the IVs value. IVs cap out at 3.

But, you may find yourself asking, what do Stat Dice and Stat Modifiers even do?

Currently, they're for combat! While the attack itself determines how much damage it can do, the pokemon's stats determine if the attack hits, it's minimum damage, how hard they are to hit, and even how much they can reduce the damage! When attacking, say with a Physical Move, the attacking pokemon rolls 1d6 + their ATK Modifiers against the defending pokemon's DEF Modifier + 3. If the attack hits, roll the move's Power and add any bonuses given. Such as Same Type Attack Bonus (STAB) or type effectiveness. The defending pokemon rolls their DEF Dice, subtracting their result from the Power roll.

Power has now been converted into d6s, to find a pre-existing move's Power divide it's power by 25 and round up! With the exception of very high damaging moves, most moves deal 1d6 to 6d6 damage.

So a move like Tackle deals 2d6 damage.

I could go on, but for now I want to leave this here and just see what people think! I've enjoyed working on it and am pretty close to being able to do a simple beta of it. So, have a copy of the pdf and lemme know what you think!

EDIT (4/20/24): Yo what if I just suddenly dropped even more rules in this post? Yea? Yea! So here's how trainers work!

Trainers are divided into four Careers; Field Researcher, League Challenger, Contest Coordinator and Pokemon Breeder! These careers determine starting gear, recommend a set of skills (more on those later!!!), and determine how the player can make money. Field Researchers are basically the intern equivalent of a Professor's Aide! They go out, encounter as many new pokemon as possible, and get paid a weekly salary! They can even earn bonuses for finding odd pokemon, such as ones with unusual movesets~! League Challengers are pokemon trainers like in the games! Beat gyms, get badges, take on the champion. Easy as! They get paid based on the trainers they defeat, which can be picked up at a PokeCenter or just given to them immediately. Contest Coordinators focus on training pokemon for Gen 3 style'd Contests! They make money by winning contests, with each rank paying out higher rewards! And lastly, Pokemon Breeders! Like the name says, they make their money by breeding and raising pokemon at the requests of the Pokemon League or other trainers. The more specific the request, the more money they earn for it!

Trainers also have skills! These work a lot like Stat Grades, but they don't have an associated modifier. When making a trainer, a player picks 6 skills out of 12. Players then have 18 points to distribute however they want into those 6 skills, up to a maximum of 5. The other skills are left at 1. The skills available are: Archeology, Cheering, Climbing, Cooking, Fishing, Foraging, Knowledge, Nursing, Riding, Sneaking, Spotting and Swimming!

I'm currently working on reformatting the doc so enjoy the new tidbits for now! See you again when I've finished the doc!