#RPGs

[lawfulgoodness]

No, the trick is to always make them think you're feeling #1.

The Three DM reactions to Player Theories are, in my experience: 1.) Wow that is wildly inaccurate 2.) Shit they’re on to me/Wow they figured it out nice job guys 3.) …Well that’s much better than what I had planned so that’s true now

The trick is to never let on which one you’re feeling

[kottkrig]

If you've played RPGs for a long time, did you also use to have a favorite class you always defaulted to at one point in your life, and now it's a completely different one?

When I was a teen I stuck to the magic types, especially the darker ones like warlock/necromancer, and now around 30 I strongly prefer fast-paced melee classes with little to no focus on magic like rogue/warrior/ranger

I think the change might have something to do with me falling in love with cardio fitness in adulthood.... I don't have time to study I need SPEED GOGOGO

[anim-ttrpgs]

Everyone get excited for the upcoming January 30th Beta release of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, including two adventure modules previously only available to patreon subscribers! This has been a rough month for us financially, so we're going to really need your support when it launches.

[whereiswonderland]

still slowly picking away at the blues

[toy-dragon]

While not poker, my game Fractured Knight on itchio is a journaling game resolved entirely through a modified tripeaks solitaire, all about a heroic sacrifice becoming a cursed immortality. It only requires a single deck, part of the modification coming from adding the deck's jokers while shuffling

Has anyone made a TTRPG that is explicitly inspired by Balatro? I ask because as I play it more and more, I'm surprised at how much player expression is packed into that game. A given run definitely has a ton of optimal play, don't get me wrong, but there's also a lot of wiggle room for players to pick up pet jokers and run preferred hands. Many times, I've felt the game scream at me to play something else, but Flush Five Aces is so fun to build around that sometimes I'll force it, usually to my own detriment.

If nothing else, could someone recommend me some games that use playing cards for their primary resolution mechanic? I'd appreciate it.

[msunitedstatesjames]

I've touched on this in a couple of other semi-related posts before, but I find it hilarious and I appreciate how much Johanna Hezenkoss thinks Emmrich is the protagonist of Veilguard. Like, this woman could not give less of a fuck about Rook. She almost always refers to Rook only by their relationship to Emmrich. She refers to Rook as "one of Volkarin's hangers-on," "that impudent whelp following [Emmrich] around," "Volkarin's companion," and as Emmrich's "paramour." None of these imply that she thinks Rook has much agency. Instead, she acts like Rook is just helplessly following Emmrich around like a puppy, helping him complete tasks (which I guess is partly true).

If Rook romances Emmrich, Hezenkoss assumes that Emmrich seduced Rook and not the other way around, even though Emmrich is noticeably older than Rook and has hardly left the Necropolis in years. She's seemingly amazed by it, and yet it never once crosses her mind that Rook might have initiated the relationship (which is actually the case).

She also refers to Emmrich as the one who destroyed her construct, which is technically true, but she ignores the major assistance he had from Rook, another companion, and most notably Manfred. He couldn't have pulled it off without their help, and had in fact given up, but Hezenkoss acts like Emmrich was her sole opponent in that battle.

I've said before that part of the reason for this is that Hezenkoss seems to think of herself as the main villain of the story, so Emmrich must be the main hero. Hezenkoss says that some of the other big bads of Dragon Age, the Venatori, were nothing more to her than slightly useful and genuinely annoying. She clearly thinks herself above an entire organization of some of the most powerful mages in the world. And she sees Emmrich as pretty close to her in terms of raw power, since she almost invited him to her Vengeance Party but ultimately decided he was too much of a danger to her plans. She also states that she tried to get him to join her in the past, which I don't think she would do for anyone she considered to be less than her equal. Emmrich is genuinely the only person in the game she shows any respect for. Though she mocks his age and finds him to be too sentimental, too moral, and too fearful, she shows signs of agreeing with him on some topics, and she obviously respects his abilities if nothing else. No one else in the game acknowledges his frankly ridiculous knowledge and skill level (except Solas in the end) as much as Hezenkoss does.

And really, Emmrich does have main character energy. Though he does have some age and mortality related fears, dude is overflowing with confidence. When you first meet him, looking for a Fade expert, he has absolutely no problem telling you he's the best possible person for the job. Though he apparently hasn't left the Necropolis in years, he's totally down to join the team and go anywhere you want him to go. If you romance him, he is initially surprised, but he quickly turns into the smoothest dude around, and throughout the game you can hear him comment on some of his many relationships through the years. He's well-dressed, well-spoken, charismatic, highly educated, unfailingly kind, extremely powerful, and he's done so well for himself that Harding mistakes the son of a butcher and a cook for a member of the Nevarran nobility. No wonder Hezenkoss thinks he's the protagonist. The real protagonist is just out here winging it on guts and good luck alone.

[biowareproblems]

N7 Day is going to hit a bit differently this year, most of us won't even be out of DA:TV's character creator by then

[bharv]

I literally can’t get over this humble bundle just one of these games is worth that value and more?? These games are some of the best RPGs of all time and some incredibly new releases!! I own over half but I’m tempted to repurchase just to get the rest!!!

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[lawfulgoodness]

Shoutout to the Elder Millennial at the table next to me at the gaming bar, whose barbarian just charged into battle shouting "LEEEEROYYYY JENKINS!!!!"

and then had to stop and sheepishly explain a World of Warcraft meme to his genZ GM.

[bodhrancomedy]

Here me out - turn-based (J)RPGs like Dragon Quest need to start adding into their party roster:

- Old women

- butch lesbians

- skimpily dressed men vs sensibly clad women

- more animals

- small boy children

- middle aged women

- fat women

- horses (yes, covered under animals, but I want to have my horse a playable member and drop-kick enemies)

- ambassadors (whadda mean you’re sending members of the royal family? You have diplomats, that’s what they’re for)

- old thieves

- redeemed(ish) female villains

[notsogreatdion]

✶ INTERACTIVE FICTION RECS 4.0 ✶

✶ The Night Market 1 & 2 (wip) - @night-market-if

✶ Honor Bound - @hpowellsmith

✶ The People's House

✶ answer these 10 questions and i'll tell you what kind of lover you are

✶ Viatica - @fir-fireweed

✶ Aquarium, Thanksgiving and Valentine's (unfinished) - @hpowellsmith

✶ Press Play - @pressplay-if (wip)

✶ Misplaced - @calliopefiction (wip)

✶ Love and Leases - @loveandleases (wip)

✶ Fervency - @fervency-if (wip)

✶ Drink Your Villain Juice - @drinkyourvillainjuice (wip)

✶ Paved in Ashes - @pavedinashes-if (wip)

✶ The Muse - @themuse-if (wip)

✶ The Ballad of the Young Gods - @childrenofcain-if (wip)

✶ The Eternal Library - @leiatalon (wip)

⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣ ✶

VN'S

✶ Tomorrow Will Be Dying - (wip)

✶ Keyframes - @blank-house (wip)

✶ Killer Chat! - @rosesrotofficial

✶ First Bite

✶ Draculesti

⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣ ✶

BITSY

✶ novena

✶ Well Tended

✶ In the pines, in the pines, where...

✶ walk with me.

✶ ENDLESS SCROLL

✶ The Ritual

⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣⌣ ✶

if recs 1.0 & if recs 2.0 & if recs 3.0 & new projects recs

secret shameless plug to check out if you want more if content - @if-whats-new

[fort-of-novelty]

I'm bored of elemental giants. Use environmental giants instead.

Environmental Giants all start out the same, but their bodies take up the features of the place they live in. They become a reflection of their domain.

Giant takes up residence in the cliffs of dover? Not a stone giant. No, that's specifically The Giant of Dover. Its body is made of chalk. It can create dust clouds of chalk with its breath, its shoulders are padded with tufts of short grasses and blackberry bushes.

Giant takes up residence in the ruins of a highway during an apocalypse? That's the I-95 Giant. It has rebar spines along its back, skin of pavement and concrete, and wears wrecked cars as armor.

And to make this idea more dynamic, the giant's form changes as the ecosystem changes. A river gets diverted away from a Giant's domain? Then the Giant dries up along with its land. Now the Giant has an incentive to protect its dominion, and a weakness that its enemies can exploit.

[anim-ttrpgs]

I and my friends are making a ttrpg for fun, and have come to an impasse. We disagree about the inclusion of an attribute, that dictates the PCs bravery. Therefore I wonder what a gamedev plugged into the TTRPG scene, thinks about mechanics that make PCs act brave/cowardly.

Well if you ask me specifically, I’m going to tell you don’t include anything that can take control of a player’s character away from them, but that does not mean that you can't have any kind of mechanic/stat that governs a PCs fear or stress level.

I personally can’t stand that mechanics that dictate that PCs run away, or dictate that they do anything at all like by falling under mind control, not because I think of the character as myself or some shit like that, I just consider myself to be the person most qualified to know what he or she would do in any given situation, so I’ve never been a fans of passing or failing saving throws or whatever determining if my character takes a certain action or not.

This is not to be confused with, like, regular dice rolls. Rolls to determine if my character can do a certain action well enough to succeed are totally fine, in fact I often want more of those.

This is one of the reasons why the Composure and Tiers of Fear systems in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy work the way they do.

We definitely wanted fear to be something that could affect the PCs and cause them to run away in a realistic fashion, these aren’t supposed to be fearless action-heroes, but I didn’t want it to be just a dice roll and then the GM tells you that your PC has to run away now. So, instead, Composure acts as a “cap” to the PC’s Skill modifiers. Base Skills cannot be higher than the PC’s current Composure level, making them worse and worse at succeeding skill checks the more frazzled and fatigued they are.

This never forces a situation where a player is told “your PC is going to run away no matter what,” but it means that the lower and lower that Composure gets, the more running away or surrender seems like a better and better idea.

That isn’t to say that mechanics that force certain character actions have absolutely no place in RPGs, hell Eureka even has one instance of this with wolfman rampages, but that’s only for one single character type, not a main mechanic which affects all PCs.

It’s well known that I really love AD&D2e, which has tons of that, though I also think that that may be one of the reasons why such a mechanic is so prevalent in TTRPGs in general. I’ve found that for a lot of TTRPGs, if you pick any random mechanic and ask “why is this in the game,” the answer is often some variation of “because D&D did it,” with little thought as to whether it needs to be in this RPG that isn’t D&D, or as to whether it was even a good idea when D&D did it.

Ultimately, study lots of RPGs, and know that there is more than one option besides just "do it the way D&D does it" and "don't do it at all."

[sprintingowl]

Deadball

Deadball Second Edition is a platinum bestseller on DrivethruRPG. This means it's in the top 2% of all products on the site. Its back cover has an endorsement from Sports Illustrated Kids.

It's also not an rpg I'd heard about until I discovered all of these facts one after another.

I was raised in a profoundly anti-sports household. My father would say stuff like "sports is for people who can't think" and "there's no point in exercising, everything in your body goes away eventually." So I didn't learn really any of the rules of the more popular American sports until I was in my mid twenties, and I've been to two ballgames in my life. I appreciate the enthusiasm that people have for sports, but it's in the same way that I appreciate anyone talking about their specific fandom.

One of the things that struck me reading Deadball was its sense of reverence for the sport. Its language isn't flowery. It's plain and technical and smart. But its love for baseball radiates off of the pages. Not like a blind adoration. But like when a dog sits with you on the porch.

For folks familiar with indie rpgs, there's a tone throughout the book that feels OSR. Deadball doesn't claim to be a precise simulation or a baseball wargame or anything like that---instead it lays out a bunch of rules and then encourages you to treat them like a recipe, adjusting to your taste. And it does this *while* being a detailed simulation that skirts the line of wargaming, which is an extremely OSR thing to do.

For folks not familiar with baseball, Deadball starts off assuming you know nothing and it explains the core rules of the sport before trying to pin dice and mechanics onto anything. It also explains baseball notation (which I was not able to decipher) and it uses this notation to track a play-by-play report of each game. Following this is an example of play and---in a move I think more rpgs should steal from---it has you play out a few rounds of this example of play. Again, this is all before it's really had a section explaining its rules.

In terms of characters and stats, Deadball is a detailed game. You can play modern or early 1900s baseball, and players can be of any gender on the same team, so there's a sort of alt history flavor to the whole experience, but there's also an intricate dice roll for every at bat and a full list of complex baseball feats that any character can have alongside their normal baseball stats. Plus there's a full table for oddities (things not normally covered by the rules of baseball, such as a raccoon straying onto the field and attacking a pitcher,) and a whole fatigue system for pitchers that contributes a strong sense of momentum to the game.

Deadball is also as much about franchises as it is about individual games, and you can also scout players, trade players, track injuries, track aging, appoint managers of different temperaments, rest pitchers in between games, etc.

For fans of specific athletes, Deadball includes rules for creating players, for playing in different eras, for adapting historical greats into one massively achronological superteam, and for playing through two different campaigns---one in a 2020s that wasn't and one in the 1910s.

There's also thankfully a simplified single roll you can use to abstract an entire game, allowing you to speed through seasons and potentially take a franchise far into the future. Finances and concession sales and things like that aren't tracked, but Deadball has already had a few expansions and a second edition, so this might be its next frontier.

Overall, my takeaway from Deadball is that it's a heck of a game. It's a remarkably detailed single or multiplayer simulation that I think might work really well for play-by-post (you could get a few friends to form a league and have a whole discord about it,) and it could certainly be used to generate some Blaseball if you start tweaking the rules as you play and never stop.

It's also an interesting read from a purely rpg design perspective. Deadball recognizes that its rules have the potential to be a little overbearing and so it puts in lots of little checks against that. It also keeps its more complex systems from sprawling out of control by trying to pack as much information as possible into a single dice roll.

For someone like me who has zero background in baseball, I don't think I'd properly play Deadball unless I had a bunch of friends who were into it and I could ride along with that enthusiasm. However as a designer I like the book a lot, and I'm putting it on my shelf of rpgs that have been formative for me, alongside Into The Odd, Monsterhearts, Mausritter, and Transit.