#also want a ttrpg one but a d20 is pretty basic so i want something a little funky

[deadlydreamin]

just realised i don’t think i ever posted my tattoo on here of the mushroom cat (pic was taken after it was done and it’s fully healed now, it was like a month ago). his name is toad bc i main toad in mario kart!!

(done by heather.mudtattoos on instagram)

[dice-wizard]

So I have a pretty basic question

what’s the benefit of a dice pool rpg system over just rolling a d100 or something?

Okay so, a single die (but also d% even though this is rolled as two dice) has a flat distribution. There is an equal chance of all results on the die. When you roll a d20 your odds of a 1 are the same as the odds of a 20. The d20 was intentionally used for attacks in D&D because of the swinginess of that probability.

When you use a dice pool, it creates a bell curve instead, broadening and stabilizing your results. This is why PbtA is built around the 7-9 mixed success result - this will happen with much more stable frequency than rolling 10+ on 1d20. Similarly, Exalted uses pool math that allows the player to estimate every 2 dice generating one success, around which all the base difficulties are structured. When you start fucking with things like ones taking away in classic World of Darkness, you destabilize the nice curve and get into bad swinginess again.

The smaller your single die, the tighter (andore difficult) the framework for where you can adjudicate failure. My butthole clenches when I see people using single d6 resolution and have failure on 3 or less.

I don't really think people understand the importance of mathematical stability underpinning your basic resolution, if you're going to do something with randomization at all.

When someone says "We'll just roll a d20" I ask, is it because you want that level of swinginess? Usually no. Usually the answer is because that's what that person is familiar with - which fuels some of my distaste for WotC's stranglehold on the ttrpg zeitgeist.

Anyway, the difference is all in the control you want to have over success, failure, and your system's ability to predict and adjudicate that.

[bleongambetta]

A singular rite in the life of a tabletop designer is the creation of their D&D heartbreaker. I’ve held off on it personally, in part by making near-misses like RADCrawl, but the siren song has proven to be a little too powerful and thus I’ve started on extremely temporarily named BL-G Hack. It is just coincidence that I’m additionally trying out blogging at the same time, after reading a Twitter (X?) thread with discussion of how much in the indie space is lost to Discord.

I’m starting from a framework of what I want the game to feel like and how I want to work on the game.

What I Want The Game To Feel Like

In terms of the table experience, I want the game to feel like playing a mostly theater of the mind D&D. I’m a huge 4e apologist, but for this I want to try to capture what it felt like to play D&D as a kid and we goofed around with world and city maps, but didn’t usually get out the grid for combat. I want to evoke some of the Catalogue TTRPG feeling, but ideally with choosing things pretty quickly. I want for characters to feel powerful and be able to do cool things, without feeling like bags of HP.

There’s definitely some merging of PbtA and D&D that I’m aiming for; but I don’t want it to feel like PbtA. I’m aiming for resolution systems that give interesting results, not full on Moves. You roll d20s.

I want to have players battling monsters and feeling like badasses. I want the game to feel ‘gamey.’ I’m developing a set of toys that tell a fantasy story.

I want to simultaneously have the joy and excitement of playing a West Marches game while avoiding the feeling of ‘go out and conquer.’ I love looking at a map, exploring it, battling things, and grabbing riches… but I don’t want to casually recreate the same approach of D&D of ‘orcs are evil, we are allowed to take their stuff.’ Balancing that is a little fiddly, but I think I have a solution that I am comfortable with.

How I Want To Build This Game

I want to approach this game in the style of blogs, Dragon magazine, and tiny splat books of the 3.5 era. Scenarios, skills, abilities, classes, monsters, etc should be able to be relatively stand alone; the kind of thing that I can sit down and crunch something out over the span of a lunch break or two. I think I’m going to try to keep barrier to entry on this low, the intent is to let people explore what kind of D&D I like to play.

That said, I’m aiming to be able to after initial release have some fun with zine-size releases that give some locations, some monsters, class options, etc. I’m actually truly hoping to get a group together to actually PLAY this game and have that playing inform design… but, let’s stay realistic here.

Core Systems

So, without further delay… the first bites of The BL-G Hack.

Characters have stats, probably six of them, probably the same D&D stats. When a roll is called for, the player rolls at least a d20 and tries to get under their stat for a hit. A basic roll is d20, a proficient roll is 2d20, and there may be higher bonus dice than that.

One hit (rolling under your stat) gives you a partial, marginal, or barely managed success. Two hits (rolling twice under your stat or your stat exactly) is a full hit, a heroic hit. Three or more hits (rolling thrice under your stat or an exact roll plus an under) is a truly superheroic hit.

Characters have classes, which give them proficiency in some scenarios which allows them to roll two d20s instead of one. They also give them a couple of Abilities that allow them to do cool things and a table for starting equipment. When characters level up, they’ll get new abilities which can come from any class or situational ones. Character classes will be specific (think prestige classes from 3.5 rather than base classes), but hopefully pretty mix and match.

Between adventures, are Map Phase and Company Phase. The GM will run the Map Phase where dark forces move, quests and landmarks are added, and the map is revealed by the player’s actions. Additionally, some player abilities will allow them to be invited to Map Phase or give input into Map Phase. Company Phase is run by the players, where they can share equipment, spend gold to roll for purchases, and take downtime activities.

Call to Adventure

The world is misted in a choking miasma; remnants from the Shattering when the death of gods sent magic running wild, slaughtering and corrupting all it burned over. In few seats of power the mages who did not succumb to the falling produced the Dimlight crystals that hold back the corruption and prevented all life from being burned out. The spells that produce these Dimlight artifacts destroyed the mages who cast them, turning their bodies into haunting, crystaline statues that radiate safety. In larger cities, where mages worked in circles, the protection may extend over neighborhoods. In rural areas, where only a single adept worked the protection may be as little as a room.

The world in miasma is dangerous; elemental monsters and corrupted humanity feeds on all who dare delve into the mist. The very air stings to breathe where Dimlight doesn’t clarify it and can have worse effects. There are refugees in the miasma and small enclaves that have gained access to Dimlight, but most are clinging to a solitary existance separate from the world. Those who live in cities where Dimlight is more plentiful have can live more normal lives, though communication with other cities and wealth remain exclusive to the hands of nobles and the wealthiest merchants.

The world just changed; Dimlight has been miniaturized. A new generation of Dimlight spells can be created without killing it’s user and requiring significantly less space for the artificial crystal. Dimlight torches offer the greatest possibility, an opportunity for adventurers to delve into the miasma and destroy the godsplinters that corrupt the land. The world is still dangerous, even when the miasma pulls back the monsters remain. But there is no end to the treasures that could be gained; abandoned riches, incredible power, and reclaiming homes long lost.

Roadmap

Currently I've got this, four out of five starting character classes, and some ideas that I've got to get into paper. The actual PDF of it is probably a little bit off, but I'm hoping to have an accessible, playable version available soon.

If you'd like to get it as soon as possible, consider backing my Patreon where I'll be doing an announcement post with a link soon! There'll be an itch page too, but it'll need to be more final before that.

So what do you think? Wanna play some BL-G Hack?

[dicestew]

Root Reads: Bastards. Pearlescent Edition

Bastards is a minimalist "dragon games" inspired TTRPG by Micah Anderson and can be found at Spear Witch webstore. I'll be doing a read through and share my thoughts with yall. Let's get started.

As you can see in the table of content above, the rules are super simplified and streamlined. You roll a d20 only when the action is risky or if failure would end up making the story more interesting. If the result is under the relevant stat then you succeed. There are only three stats: Strength, Dexterity, and Wisdom. Luck is another stat where you have limited amount of Luck to be used in a test to try to push the situation toward your favor. This Luck stat is pretty much the same mechanic as the Luck in Troika! TTRPG. Pretty much your typical rules-lite OSR philosophy like Cairn or Into the Odd.

All of the rules pretty much take up a page each and keep in mind this book is super tiny - like A6 tiny. The combat rules above is a perfect example of how each rule is listed out per page. Combat is super dangerous and should be avoided as much as possible. You start with 1d+Strength as your HP and you have to test Luck if you reach 0 HP. Strong OSR style danger here. Your starting HP will determine your class which remind me a lot of Into the Odd with the backgrounds based on what you roll for HP and highest Ability Score. The class options are pretty much your standard fantasy classes like wizard, fighter, thief, etc. However there are two that intrigues me - acrobat and diviner:

Would love to play as an acrobat. Who doesn't want to try to get through small spaces?! Inventory is basically a slot-based system where injuries will take up a slot therefore reducing space for additional item to be stored. There rea generic starting loadouts for all characters then you roll up the weapon your character will have.

The opposition rule here is pretty interesting - In order to succeed you have to roll within the range of your opponent's HD/Level to your relevant stat. I find this interesting because you don't see a range type of threshold often in TTRPGs. Next section is all about spellcasting. Basically you roll up your spell at character creation and you will get an action word and 1-2 object words. I love this because you can really be creative about how your spells work based on the words you rolled up. Leveling up is so simple. You simply level up every other session or whenever you did something epic. You gain 1 HP and test against one of your stats to attempt to raise it by one. Simple as that.

That's it. 18 pages of basic rules and char creation. Keep in mind this is in A6 format so the writing is very streamlined and minimalist. I love it.

Rest of the book is basically the GM section with optional rules, gm guides, and tools.

The optional rules include tracking time and light, exploring in hexes, rolling for encounters with some sample tables, followers, list of NPCs you can hire as hirelings, and a reaction table with guide. All of those are very straightforward rules and typical of OSR games but very streamlined.

The bestiary section comes with this nice guide of how to make your monsters and you can see how this makes it easy to convert monsters from other OSR games by using their HD stat. Also, there are several pages worth of monster statblocks available to be used in the sessions.

Next section focuses on procedures to create your dungeon such as traps, adding some neat tricks like illusory wall, generating treasures, a list of magic items, a list of different potions, magic wands, and the most important - a guide on how to design your dungeon!

There is a lot of random tables, optional classes, and stuff like that. Just look at this one:

The last page is a funnel-0 rules which totally rocks. I love funnels! TLDR: This is a great minimalist style OSR game with all the tools you need to make your own dungeon in a tiny A6 book!

TO BUY: Spear Witch (physical+PDF) Itch.io (PDF)

[lykosangelic]

ohoho it's my hyperfixation I have some suggestions!!

monsterhearts, a queer-focused ttrpg run on the much simpler apocalypse world system. you play as teenage monsters, its melodramatic as all hell, and I often liken it to riverdale if it had monsters (dont tell me if riverdale already has monsters, I haven't watched beyond the first season and I dont intend to)

monster of the week, also apocalypse world system game. you play as monster hunters! this can be hacked to be more similar to dnd if you so please, but it's perfectly fun in a modern setting too

apocalypse world itself is out of print, but pdfs are available online. it's also a pretty good game, set in a post-apocalyptic world with an ability to tap into something called the psychic maelstrom. this game revolutionized how people write tabletop games (clearly, based on all the powered by the apocalypse games), and it's well worth at least a scan to understand why it's so loved and why the system is so loved. any pbta game is significantly easier to play, run, and make characters in than dnd (which I still love by the way! I just think pbta games are more beginner friendly)

if you want something run on a d20 system, look into epithets/anime campaign, a chaotic anime styled ttrpg run on a very basic system. it's not fully out yet, so its available for free online in the playtesting stage.

other games I've heard good things about but havent personally played and so cannot speak to: geiger counter (horror/scifi), ten candles (horror/tragedy), thirsty sword lesbians (queer/romantic iirc), small town skeletons (horror, and very indie! I know personally one of the creators)

obviously there are other, bigger games, but I'm sticking to the more indie ones, because indie creators deserve your money! they work hard on what they make!

also I'm a big nerd for this shit, so if you want, feel free to shoot me a message and I can help you figure out a system that would work for an adventure you want to run!

also if you're interested, maybe stick around, I might be writing a ttrpg. I'm currently on a break from it because of university but there is a concept in the works!

In light of the news that Hasbro is considering using multiple properties it owns for NFTs, including D&D, I would just like to remind everyone that PDFs of virtually all D&D source books are available online for free if you look and it's always moral to pirate from WotC