#Indie TTRPG Module

[jeffs-gamebox]

Check out an adventure based on the 5th of November. Anyone remember the famous line quoted in V for Vendetta? This is a D&D 5E compatible adventure based on the British Bonfire night. Long live the Mayor of Black Tallon!

[austinramsaygames]

The first campaign module for Beam Saber, Stardost Memento, is now live featuring great cover art by @bfleuter! Join the Jovangellian Resistance as they make one final desperate strike at the Norrish conquerors:

**OPERATION MEMENTO**

[christiansorrell]

I made the Severance chip for Mothership!

In a bold step forward for both cyberware and team management across the galaxy, MEMOS recently debuted Second Self™, a minimally-invasive brain implant capable of creating a secondary self within a single mind—a self with their own memories, job titles, skills, and personalities. With Second Self™, a crew of four becomes a crew of eight, capable of handling twice as many employment objectives and working in an exponential array of personalities. Second Self™ crews are able to work twice as long (on average) between shore leave periods when compared to traditionally-Selved crews.

Second Self™ is a 5.5��x8.5” bifold pamphlet detailing a cutting-edge piece of cyberware, capable of creating two unique Selves within one body. This implant can be taken at character creation, implanted into an existing character as part of an employment arrangement, or even purchased outright for those wealthy enough to do so. It has the potential for some huge implications at the table with some particularly fun dramatic moments mixed in there when things go wrong (or you need to use your Secondary Self to rescue your Primary Self in a moment’s notice).

You can download it now over on Itch.io FOR FREE: HERE!

This is obviously hugely inspired by Severance which I’ve been having a lot of fun with and more loosely inspired by Mickey 17 which I loved. Enjoy!

[razmahdaz-art]

HEY, I WORKED ON A DND MODULE

My friend over at Imp Games on Twitter and I (and a small team of artists) Worked a DnD 5e Module! And I also Playtested it forever ago and HEY IT'S GOOD.

Twice Dead In Terminus is a great mini-campaign, filled with Undead Cowboys, Moral Quandaries, and Gun-Slinging Subclasses to Add To Your Game! Please got Support my Buddy Evan and Keep an Eye Out For It once it gets Released!

This took like, 6 months to make because Art is hard. So GO LOOK AT IT.

[norgad-art]

I just released I Miss You Very Much, an adventure for Mausritter.

Featuring: climbing, a very sad bird, tool booths, the no-longer-minted 5 cent coin, the fog, sam porter bridges, falling to your death, "resurrection".

[franciscolemos]

Finally, my Mausritter settlement is out. This small forest settlement, centered around a cozy inn, is home to quirky characters ready to send the PCs off to solve small yet epic entanglements.

[goblincow]

GREEN MILK | #004 | proclamations from the game design mountain

Me, bracing my wizard hat: The proclamation I'm yelling at the top of my lungs while great winds steal away my voice atop the Game Design Mountain: The medium of ttrpg systems with adventure modules must be forever changed! Instead of the Roles of play being glued to the System (character playbooks & classes attached to respective games), character archetypes should* be assigned at the level of the Module, for example: You roll 1d8 on the index page of Revenge of the Radioactive Basement Gators: you got "7 - The Inheritance". No one else will be this role – you check the box and turn to page 7. Beneath the shattered facade of wealth, your prompt reads: "Clear all wounds when shit finally hits the fan – you adapt instantly, like you were born for this, like this is all there ever was. You're ready to die down here. You're ready to kill. Your names are Death and Glory, and you understand each other." My wizard hat, soaring high above the scree of the Game Design Mountain:

From my end of April newsletter, additional thoughts lurk within!

[fallen-sun-ttrpg]

One shot module: the false king massacre

The party is hired as security for the kingdoms yearly festival of falsehoods where the kingdom holds a traditional play where a fake king and court are chosen for a play in which the court dies in a comedy of errors trying to assassinate the king. Give the party time to explore the market and the festival area taking I. Shows like the great mangini, playing games like drop dead or ring toss, trading for trinkets. seed clues for later. A carnival that has been in town a few days and is leaving soon, the miasma being particularly thick out of town, other guards asking about if someone strange came this way, then this year someone goes berserk and commits actual murder of those involved. They’ll attempt to run off but if someone in the party tries to catch them and succeeds…Initiative

Barkae nall (half corrupted) lv: 3 50HP

Bare: 3 sharp: 2 blunt: 2 projectile: 1

Speed: 3 durability: 4 strength: 3 stealth: 1 knowledge: 1 Magic: 3

Blood lightning

Life drain

Tactile torture

Barkae will vanish in a blinding light leaving the party to look for clues, like the aforementioned carnival poster, asking around for info, finding a ruined costume that wasn’t in the play, traces of miasma or crumbling metal. Depending on how fast they piece it together you can get them to the carnival or have them chase a still fleeting nall through catacombs (the safest way through the miasma without heavy exposure. He won’t be fightable hes too far ahead but will chuck more cursed spells towards the party until he mutates at the carnival

If they get it fast enough they can go to the carnival sooner and either fight 4 jesters

Jesters 15 hp x 4

2 bare 1sharp 2 blunt 1 projectile

Speed: 2 durability: 2 strength: 3 stealth: 1 knowledge: 4 Magic: 2

Or try diplomacy and search for nall until you find his hiding spot and a map of the catacombs and go to look for him….where you find the corrupted beast he once was and need to put him down

Barkae nall (fully corrupted) lv: 3 100HP

Bare: 3 sharp: 3 blunt: 3 projectile: 0

Speed: 4 durability: 4 strength: 4 stealth: 0 knowledge: 0 Magic: 0

[omamervt]

I've often heard people debate the role of Games Journalists and their duties relating to coverage of Games, but its usually in the context of letting them off the hook for just taking the easy route and shilling for the AAA industry.

After This Article from Polygon today, whose TTRPG beat is almost entirely covering WoTC press releases, written by the editor for the TTRPG beat, talking about how indie TTRPGs need to do better about getting press coverage themselves (hmm wonder how that would happen, Charlie!), while neglecting to highlight his own team members' work to do so, but finding plenty of time to bemoan the lack of any upcoming Curse of Strahd-tier adventure modules from WoTC?

Yeah we're done with that. No more. Don't even think about it.

[forlorn-plushie]

Styles of Prep - Games that Care

Yet another of the lies that Wizards of the Coast has sold TTRPG players, which they've bought into wholeheartedly, is that there are different styles of preparation, and all are valid for every game (because both are valid for D&D, and D&D is right for every game, of course.)

I'm gonna go over a couple games I've run, and explain that actually they all care about the type and level of preparation the GM does.

Indie games are often honest and open about what they want. To take a high-prep example, I recently ran Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. It is not subtle! In the narrator section, right after the introduction, it says "We cannot advise you strongly enough to use prewritten adventure modules". It's not just there - throughout the rules, there's an emphasis that the situation, the state of the world at the outset and thus at every time that follows, is known and rigid. Eureka is a mystery game - the who, what, how, why, and more are all set in stone. The narrator is forbidden to change the scenario on the fly.

Eureka is very forceful of this because the authors, writing a game for mystery investigations, are well aware that it's damn near impossible to make a coherent mystery up on the fly. I'm sure they've tried. I've tried. It's impossible. Something will contradict, and you won't notice until well after the players have reasoned from that contradictory information. It can be done, but not well, and the mental load on the GM is going to kill them.

It's not a genre thing - Eureka is a game about the act of solving mysteries, but so in Brindlewood Bay. I don't have experience with Brindlewood Bay myself, but I do know that the GM doensn't have a real mystery ahead of time - there's a move which is rolled to determine whether a theory is correct. Both are mystery games, but they approach them differently - and each makes a vastly different demand of the GM's preparations.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Eureka, more in line with Brindlewood Bay in fact, is just about every Powered by the Apocalypse game. Apocalypse World is very clear about what to prepare, and it's more or less the opposite of Eureka: "Daydream some apocalyptic imagery, but DO NOT commit yourself to any storyline or particular characters."

The rules actually tell you to start on what would typically be 'prep' during the first session: "Work on your threat map and essential threats". It's more like note-taking, at that point, just placing the names of stuff that gets mentioned in the session. After that first session, and between each other, you do some real out-of-session work, solidifying the notes you made into Threats.

I won't go into it at length, but Dungeon World is much the same - though there's no 'map' for threats, as characters are expected to be far more mobile, the system of solidifying problems that were mentioned in-game into problems with some mechanically attached descriptors is much the same.

Now, on to the elephant-sized dragon in the room - Dungeons and Dragons. The game itself is, truthfully, quite honest about this. It's the marketing team and the community, having fallen for their propaganda, who pretend low-prep is a valid way to play Dungeons and Dragons.

The 2014 DMG, correctly, focuses on prepared play. It asks DMs to consider "Do you like to plan thoroughly in advance, or do you prefer improvising on the spot?", but everything in that book is either rules text or preparation guides. Mostly the latter.

D&D, as it has existed since 3rd edition, (this is what I have experience with - I can't speak to earlier editions, except to note that there are alot of modules in their time and in the OSR tradition) is a game that thrives on prep. Even if that prep is procedural - tables of encounters and wandering monsters for an area, for example - it's impossible to run the game from nothing, without a lot of background, and have it work.

Imagine not knowing D&D, at all - you pick it up, read the non-list rules (so skipping most of the classes, races, spells, feats, backgrounds, weapons, etc) in the PHB and DMG, and try to run a game entirely improv from the rules and vibes. You'd quickly end up scouring the monster manual for appropriate encounters - and the game, by the rules, demands appropriate encounters! There's a budget system! It's a game about killing monsters and does a lot of math to try and make sure it's challenging without killing player characters.

D&D, at least in the books, is pretty honest about what it wants from preparation. It wants a lot! The playerbase pretends otherwise, but they're wrong. I've yet to find another game that tries to lie like this. Eureka wants you to use modules. Apocalypse World wants you to wing it. I have yet to find any game that actually doesn't care.

[starcrossed-loserz]

hey so uhh. I honestly don’t know what to open this post with but I do, unironically, recommend eureka! investigative urban fantasy to everyone, I’ve read thru the rule book, I’m in both servers and I must say. It’s worth it. It’s worth paying for. Everyone in the servers are lovely, I’ve made new friends (well I’d count them as friends anyway), and you can play ttrpgs (including eureka!) with said people! look. I can’t force you to buy eureka! or silk & dagger, but if you want to give your money to a small indie ttrpg who’s creators deserve the money (more than multibillion corporations)! Id seriously recommend it. I’m not super well-versed in ttrpgs, but eureka! is easy enough for me to understand while still allowing for complex characters and the like! Another fun thing is a bunch of new modules will be coming out for eureka! soon as well.

So please, if you’re considering supporting. Do it

plus, if you join the book club, I’ll always be down to chat :]

[chaospyromancy]

New art for @anim-ttrpgs !

This time it's Nick Morgan and one mystery NPC from FORIVA: The Angel Game, one of Eureka's modules. If you want to know more about them, check out @anim-ttrpgs and their ttrpg Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy!

I'm open for commissions with some slots on sale still available!

More info abt Eureka under the read more

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but our Kickstarter page is still the best place to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, and where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more than just status updates, going forward you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and it’s adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[anim-ttrpgs]

We are, like, 1-2 days off from being able to send our second completed adventure module off to playtesters. Maybe Monday or Tuesday of next week at the latest. Then, we will continue work on the FREE DEMO of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.

[ilthit]

Alternatives to Dungeons & Dragons (2024) now that they are going all-in on gacha:

Dungeons & Dragons 5e (previous) + any number of compatible indie produced modules (Obvious Mimic Press is the one I've played)

Pathfinder 2e (basically the same game, tons of adventure available)

DC20 (if you like rules improvements; not a lot of modules available yet)

Shadowdark (if you want to party like it's 1979)

Obviously Daggerheart if you're a Critical Role fan; the setting is familiar and rules easy and you can play a mushroom (or their version of tiefling, dragonborn, etc)

Literally any older version of Dungeons & Dragons that still has playable adventures out there.

Have you REALLY played all the existing DnD campaigns and modules yet? Until you have, you don't need to buy new ones.

Roll20.net has automatic DnD character sheets so you can cancel that DnDBeyond subscription if you use it just for that. It has also recently bought up Demiplane, another similar platform, which is prettier and has many of the games mentioned here.

If you want to get more adventurous with rules and setting but still like fantasy combat and skill lists, there's Runequest (bronze age fantasy for you ancient Mesopotamia nerds), which I have been reading recently.

Other genres:

Pathfinder is working on an update on Starfinder, so you can play DnD-like rules for a space adventure.

Teatime Adventures is aD20 rules game for a cozy rural furry stories about pies and being kind to each other.

Call of Cthulhu for horror (check out Chaosium Inc's Youtube channel for actual plays, love those guys) and Pulp Cthulhu for extra cheese on top; there's even Regency Cthulhu if you want to try balancing a monster hunt with a husband hunt.

This is a deep cut but A Ghastly Affair is a game set in the long 1700s and the character classes are stereotypes of gothic romance fiction, and I know I have followers who are into that shit, available on DriveThruRPG (I can't find their original website anymore so get it while you can).

I have to mention Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades, a wuxia roleplaying game from Osprey Publishing, considering @minutia-r and I have written 480K of adventuring for it.

Also I must mention Vampire: The Masquerade, which is the game that got me to take on gamemastering for the first time. The Storyteller System they use is still my favourite TTRPG system. Very gritty modern supernatural setting, and the Core Rulebook even has a caveat saying "yeah there's problematic stuff, because problematic stuff is part of the real world, fuck the Nazis though" (paraphrased). Caveat, the Core Rulebook is kind of unintuitive.

All of the above are games that have rules with skill lists and kind of the same logical approach to playing as DnD (broadly speaking).

I would not go directly from DnD to Powered by the Apocalypse games like Candela Obscura, Girl by Moonlight, or Blades in the Dark, because their logic is very different and they are less about rules and more about genre; or rather, the rules define things that the above games leave to role-playing, and very little for anything else.

For example, in Candela Obscura you would do the same roll for punching a person and breaking through a door, and in Girl by Moonlight you have to roll to confess your true feelings. Girl by Moonlight is absolutely perfect for playing a magical girl TV show though. That's what it's for.

[norgad-art]

I just released Stragglers, an adventure for Mausritter.

Featuring: OSHA violations, Deepnest, funny rocks, that thing from the end of Annihilation, Italian candles, incorrectly labeled maps. norgad.itch.io/stragglers

[thydungeongal]

Do you have any interesting indie rpg systems you recommend looking at just for fun?

Yeah!

First of all, I think everyone should look at Apocalypse World. I know the PbtA system that spawned from it has a bit of a flavor-of-the-month quality to it, but I feel most people who have experience with PbtA games haven't looked at The Original. Apocalypse World is a fantastic, evocative piece of design that is basically precision-engineered to produce a narrative in the style of a post-apocalyptic prestige TV drama.

Monsterhearts I recommend looking at as a great example of how to take a framework and run with it. It uses the PbtA framework and modifies it to support teenage monster melodrama. It is a fantastic game and has one of my favorite expressions of a social mechanic in TTRPGs that supports its themes perfectly.

Getting out of the PbtA games into a game that is pretty much the polar opposite of those games in terms of crunch and how it models its fiction, there's Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy by @anim-ttrpgs who are good people. It's an investigative game and while it uses a system based on 2d6 rolls and variable degrees of success it is very much not a PbtA game, but a very trad game. Eureka is a great example of a game with multiple interconnected systems that all act to incentivize the type of gameplay it most cares about: it has systems in place to make sure that an investigation never stalls because of bad dice rolls; it has systems for modeling the toll of extended investigations on player characters; and most importantly, it has a deadly and crunchy combat systems with real consequences to disincentivize getting into combat and actually try to utilize investigative approaches. You can also get a free version of Eureka with an introductory module right now.

Finally, for a really interesting approach to the old-school dungeon crawler, I recommend Errant. Errant is one of the most fun OSR games I've read and even if you never end up playing or running it it's got really great procedures to be poached into other old-school dungeon crawlers. And heck, one might even adapt them into other genres, because they're very solid and easily adaptable.