#armour astir

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

Trans made TTRPGs

Due to… recent events that I would rather not talk about, today's post is a highlight of different tabletop games made by trans peeps! These games are fantastic in their own right, of course, but you can also know that they were made by incredibly cool and attractive people

(Also, these are flyover descs of the game, they'll get more in-depth singular posts later, this is because I am lazy)

Perfect Draw is a phenomenal card game TTRPG that was funded in less than a day on backerkit, it's incredibly fun and has simple to learn hard to master rules for creating custom cards, go check it out!

Songs for the dusk is fucking good, pardon my language, but it's a damn good post apocalyptic game about building community in a post-capitalist-post-apocalypse-post-whatever world. do yourself a favor and if you only check out one game in this list, check this one out, its a beautiful game.

Flying Circus is set in a WW1 inspired fantasy setting full of witches, weird eldritch fish people (who are chill as hell), cults, dead nobility, and other such things. It's inspired by Porco Rosso primarily but it has other touchstones.

Wanderhome is a game about being cute little guys going on a silly adventure and growing as the seasons change, its GMless and very fun

https://weregazelle.itch.io/armour-astir Armour Astir has been featured in here before but its so damn good I had to post it twice. AA demonstrates a fundamental knowledge of the themes of mech shows in a way that very few other games show, its awesome

Kitchen Knightmares is… more of a LARP but its still really dang cool, its about being a knight serving people in a restaurant, its played using discord so its incredibly accessible

https://grimogre.itch.io/michtim Michtim is a game about being small critters protecting their forest from nasty people who wish to harm it, not via brutal violence (sadly) but via friendship and understanding (which is a good substitute to violence)

ok this technically doesn't count but I'm putting it here anyways cuz its like one of my favorite ttrpgs of all time TSL is a game about baring your heart and dueling away with people who you'll probably kiss 10 minutes later, its very very fanfic-ey and inspired by queer narratives. I put it here because its made by a team, and the expansion has a setting specifically meant to be a trans "allegory", so I'll say it counts, honestly just go check it out its good shit

https://willuhl.itch.io/mystic-lilies

Mystic Lillies is a game inspired by ZUN's Touhou Project about witches dueling powerful foes, each other, and themselves. Mystic Lillies features rapid character creation and a unique diceless form of rolling which instead uses a standard playing card deck.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/141424/nobilis-the-game-of-sovereign-powers-2002-edition I… want to do a more general overview on Jenna K as an important figure in indie RPG design, but for now just know that Nobilis is good

https://temporalhiccup.itch.io/apocalypse-keys Apocalypse Keys is a game inspired by Doom Patrol, Hellboy, X-men, and other comics about monstrousness being an allegory for disenfranchisement. Apocalypse Keys is also here because its published by Evilhat so its very cleaned up and fancy but I love how the second you check out the dev's other stuff you can tell they are a lot more experimental with their stuff, this is not a critique, it is in fact a compliment

Fellowship! I've posted about this game before, but it is again here. Fellowship has a fun concept that it uses very well mostly, its a game about defining your character's culture, and I think that's really really cool

Voidheart Symphony is a really cool game about psychic rebellion in a city that really does not like you, the more you discover for yourself the better

Panic at the Dojo is a phenomenal ttrpg based on what the Brazilian would call "Pancadaria", which basically means, fucking other's people shit up. Character Creation is incredibly open and free, meaning that many character concepts are available

Legacy 2e is a game about controlling an entire faction's choices across time, its very fun

remember to be kind to a trans person today! oh also don't even try to be transphobic in the reblogs or replies, you will be blocked so fast your head will spin

[fatt-twitter-updates]

Friends at the Table reposted:

austin walker @/austin_walker, quote reposting weregazelle's post:

If you enjoyed the last year of @friends_table, you have a lot of thanks to give to Armour Astir for that. If you haven't backed the physical copy yet, you should! kickstarter.com/projects/weregazelle-armour-astir-advent-hardback-edition

💀 briar sovereign 🎃 @weregazelle:

dawn of the final day... the armour astir kickstarter is in its final 24 hours!!! we're 300% funded!! tell your friends and don't miss out <3

7:00 AM PDT, 29 October 2024 (Source)

8:31 AM PDT, 29 October 2024 (Source)

[himecommunism]

incoming pest control

[aglennco]

Carmen and May are going somewhere nearby... (Carmen and May terrorize a hapless shopkeeper)

[loreleywrites]

Loreley's TTRPG Characters: Kalliope Vex

I had y'all vote in a poll to see which of my TTRPG characters y'all would like to hear about first, and it was a clear win for the most problematic one. Good job, Tumblr! (Genuinely, good job; I love playing Kalliope.)

Kalliope Vex is my character in Armour Astir: Advent by Briar Sovereign, a PBTA game featuring magitech mechs called astirs, big-scope faction turns that change the course of your revolution, and narrative-first rules that embrace all the Cool Robots and War Is Bads a fantasy-bent Gundam-vibed game can offer. You can find it here.

ANYWAY.

Let's start with my favorite picrew I've made of Kalliope:

Kalliope (xe/xer) is 37yo, 6' tall, and weighs just under 200lbs. Xe's got lean muscle, a goth bob, dykey combat boots, and xer left eye has a glowing green iris and black sclera to reflect the power of xer patron. I'm playing the Witch playbook, which means in order to pilot xer astir, Kalliope struck a deal with a mysterious entity known as The Deep to access the powerful magic needed to construct and control such a large machine.

Xe's of the opinion that xe shackled this being in order to use its power, but The Deep has its own plans and helps and hinders Kalliope according to its own whims. Classic D&D warlock vibes.

Kalliope's whole deal at the beginning of our campaign is that xe wants to destroy the fascist empire, the Spellbound Republic, by any means necessary. Xe spent about a decade operating as a rogue astir pilot ambushing Republic squads whenever xe could hunt them down. Now, xe's part of the crew of The Adamant, a carrier operating with Fate's Inflection, the largest anti-fascist resistance force.

Xer astir is named Clatterhulk, and it's largely constructed from leviathan bones and obsidian. The cockpit is accessed by ribs opening up and granting entry. It boasts massive obsidian claws, a mounted cannon of focused bioluminescent light on top of its skull, and carries a sniper rifle that shoots bullets imbued with the crushing pressure of deep ocean trenches. Most notably, the upper arms, upper legs, sternum, and spine of Clatterhulk are etched with a series of arcane glyphs.

Kalliope has the exact same glyphs carved into xer upper arms, upper legs, sternum, and spine. These are glyphs associated with The Deep, and they link Kalliope's magical power to the astir and allow xer to do simple things like control the astir and complicated things like sense the heartbeats of every person in Clatterhulk's range while xe's piloting it.

Born in the slums of Glass Harbor, a coastal city built inside the rim of a massive caldera that embraces Crater Bay, Kalliope endured a childhood under rule of Amaurosia, the Goddess of Fear. Ever defiant, xe didn't understand why even adults let fear rule their lives. Young Kalliope reveled in scaring other children, and as a teenager began to truly understand the power one could gain through fear. Xe watched the Spellbound Republic leverage Amaurosia's power to control the populace, so xe joined an insurgent group called the Shatter Fists. When Kalliope was about 18, the Republic managed to capture and publically execute most of the Shatter Fists, leaving xer functionally alone in the world. This is when xer quest for power brought xer in contact with The Deep, xe constructed Clatterhulk, and xe began a bloodthirsty campaign of vengeance and violence against the Republic.

To Kalliope, all that matters is power. Xe's surly, rude, and arrogant (all to a fault), shielding xerself from having to genuinely connect to another person ever again. Xe doesn't do romance; sadistic hookups are all xe thinks xe needs (Kalliope carries a ritual knife carved from whale bone on a thigh strap, and xe does not practice safe kink with it.) Kalliope doesn't just want to kill fascists, xe wants to hunt and humiliate them. Xe wants to sow fear in their ranks the same way they used fear to rule a city.

Besides breaking pathetic women, Kalliope does enjoy live music and frequents dive bars for the music as much as the women and alcohol (Xe is a heavy drinker.) Despite Kalliope's rough edges, xe is a brilliant engineer and a talented scrimshaw artist (Xer ritual knife depicts a whale locked in combat with a kraken.) Xe also loves lollipops. I don't know why. I think I just loved the idea of xer flirting with someone by taking a lollipop out of xer mouth and shoving it into the other person's. Or crunching it in one bite. Mean ladies can like candy too.

ANYWAY.

Since we've been playing (a few months now), nobody in the crew really likes Kalliope any more than they did at the beginning except Captain Archer Mulligan, the captain of the carrier. He understands that Kalliope has turned xerself into a weapon, and so long as he can aim xer, xe'll be an asset to the war effort.

Xe literally broke xer against the wall trying to punch a squadmate who was laying into xer after xe had to retreat from a sortie xe recklessly launched xerself into.

Kalliope is starting to understand that working with other people, trusting them, can be an asset for xer goals too. The more people xe can leverage in combat, the bigger fights xe can win.

Xe's also started thinking about what happens when there's no more blood to shed. It's not a thought that ever crept into xer mind before (I think xe has internalized that xe's going to die fighting in this war, despite how much xe blusters about killing every last fascist in the world.)

The big development happened only last session, as I have declared a rival for xer! There's this sniper working for the council of fascist demigods whose gun can literally take down astirs, Ririka. Ririka has escaped from multiple sorties, so during the last downtime, Kalliope hunted her down to a dive bar and confronted her with the intent to intimidate her before xe inevitably kills xer. This is the most genuine way Kalliope has ever flirted with anyone, but I don't think xe knows it yet. I'm looking forward to seeing how badly Kalliope and Ririka fuck up each other's lives. Maybe they kiss! Maybe they don't. Gotta play to find out what happens.

Well, I think that about covers what I was planning on sharing. I hope y'all enjoyed hearing about this mess of a character I'm currently playing. Happy to answer questions about xer if folks are curious.

[hallow-marshmallow]

My character from a recent Armour Astir oneshot.

Name: Choquena Class: The Witch

Great system!

[spooksiedoodle]

Commission for @homerichorror of her and @sonefire 's Armour Astir: Advent characters, Quicksilver and Watt!

I'm really proud of the way this came out and I love these two so much! This is almost certainly my biggest commission I've done yet.

[jackalopearts]

Grafted from tungsten, lead and a proprietary blend of animal muscle tissue, Control Series fangs are designed to ensure there is neither too much nor too little radiation within their area of influence. Do not approach without express clearance from operator.

[lacklusterhero747]

Sic Semper Tyrannis

In my experience, just as many TTRPG campaigns focus on war and conflict against the powers that be as focus on exploring the wild and untamed places of the world. From stories of the companions of The Inn of the Last Home in Dragonlance to the punk rock rebels and Anarchists of Shadowrun, many times the motivating force of the story is the direct fight for survival in a world that is hostile to the very people and heroes that inhabit it. It's a well tread set of story tropes that offer clearly defined goals and villains and in built sense of drama, so it's understandable why so many stories would choose to focus on these themes.

And sometimes, if you're lucky, you get to fight those battles from the cockpit of a giant robot.

Armour Astir: Advent is a high-fantasy roleplaying game about striking back against an authority that seeks to control you. It is a game of rival pilots clashing in steel-clad Astirs, of soldiers holding their own against the odds, and of spies and diplomats twisting the world to their ends. It is not a game of careful preparation or pleasant truces; It's hard to change the world without taking a risk.

I first became aware of this game because of the excellent podcast Friends at the Table, when they played the game as part of their Road to Palisade series of games, leading up to the third season of their ongoing Divine Cycle of games. Immediately I was taken by the combination of high fantasy magic merged with the classic tropes of mecha anime that were apparent in the game as written, even if the cast was hacking the material to make fit into their more futuristic world they had built.

I felt compelled to track it down to read it for myself.

Inside the PDF, written by Briar Sovereign, I found a love letter to the Mecha Genre, drawing inspiration from such luminary series as Mobile Suit Gundam and Escaflowne, putting you in the cockpit of giant suits of armor as you stride across the battlefields of a war against an evil power. But like the series it draws heavily from, it does so with a distinct focus on the pilots inside their Astirs, rather than just focusing on the mecha and the carnage they can bring. This is a game with stakes and in interest in the relationships between people. It's a game that, as the intro to this latest season of Friends at the Table puts it, is about Empire, Revolution, Settler Colonialism, Politics, Religion, War, and the many consequences there of.

Running off of a modified version of the Powered by the Apocalypse system, Armour Astir is built on already accessible system with a distinct interest in narrative storytelling. You work together with your group to define your Authority--the oppressive power that the group of players are fighting back against--and your Cause--the group that backs and hands orders down to the player characters--and build a world around these two groups and their seemingly irreconcilable differences. From there, the players build their characters from the available playbooks--The Arcanist, The Imposter, The Paradigm, The Witch, The Captain, The Diplomat, The Artificer, and The Scout--and collectively define the Carrier--their White Base or their Normandy--from which they launch their sorties against the Authority and where they spend their downtime between missions. It's an elegant way to frame a world in conflict, and once again as I will always point out, it's a game interested in the collective construction of the world in which you're going to play, thereby creating a sense of player buy in from the jump.

Still, even as a PbtA game, AA:A still manages to bring its own novel concepts to the table.

Presumably drawing inspiration from 5e D&D, the game introduces the concept of Advantage and Disadvantage to the system. Where normally you would roll 2d6+Stat in a PbtA game, hoping to roll a 10+ and succeed without a cost, Advantage and Disadvantage allow you to roll more dice, keeping a number according to their respective rules. And they stack! If you find your self with 2 advantages, for instance, then you would roll 4d6 and keep the best 2. Or if you had 2 advantages and 1 disadvantage, you would roll 3d6 and still keep the best two as advantage outnumbers disadvantage. The only caveat is that you can never roll more than 4 dice for a move.

Then there's the idea of acting with Confidence or Desperation. Certain moves, approaches, and situations can cause you to act with either of this conditions, and they fundamentally change how the dice are read. If you're acting with Confidence in a scene, any 1 you roll on a d6 is instead treated as a 6, while acting in Desperation makes any 6 you roll instead be treated as a 1.

These two rules alone could be enough for me to really consider the game an evolution of PbtA, as using the mechanics together allows you to deeply calibrate the odds of success or failure of a given move to really match the fiction of the story your telling, but the interesting ideas don't stop there.

The game asks you to define your character by a set of Hooks, which are short phrases that define how your character acts and thinks about the world and the people around them. They're guide posts for the player, reminding them what their character is about, but they're also guide posts for the GM and for the other players. They show what kinds of situations you care about and want to be drawn into, and they can be rewritten as needed, and deepened or loosened by various rules interactions that make the hooks easier or harder to change in play. Hooks can even be sacrificed permanently, crossed off your sheet forever and buying you a new advancement for your character and the ability act immediately with Confidence as your character commits themselves to the fight and how the war has changed them.

Meanwhile, the concept of Gravity Clocks, presents an incredibly dynamic way to represent the relationships between characters. Representing the attachments you have with people and groups, these clocks are countdowns to when a relationship might be challenged, confronted, or addressed. They can be one-sided, or they can be shared between two characters, and evoked to add numerical bonuses to rolls, the clock ticking forward every time it gets used in this manner. And when the six step clock fills up, the game asks you to Redefine, Commit, or Abandon the gravity between you and the subject of the clock. Each option presents its own ramifications, in addition to allowing you to take a new advancement for your character, and I could gush about them in detail for hundreds of words more, but I think it's better to simply let the game speak for itself if you choose to read it.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly to me, is the concept of The Conflict Turn. Played out between Sorties by the player characters at the Carrier level, the Conflict turn is meant to zoom out and show the greater context of the conflict. Here players direct the broader course of the struggle by playing out Conflict Scenes, directing challenges at one another through role-played scenes, reminiscent of Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands by D. Vincent Baker. It allows you to shape the course of the war and the world at a truly macro scale, and depict scenes and conflicts that might otherwise get lost in a narrow focused game about a single group of pilots on a single carrier, acting on a single front in the war. It invites players to step back and look at the whole picture and really think about what two deadlocked factions can do or must do in order to win a broader conflict. And what the consequences of those actions might be.

All in all, Armour Astir is a fascinating game that takes Powered by the Apocalypse in new and interesting directions. It offers novel new mechanical concepts to the system, while also featuring the familiar Playbook driven structure. The party's Carrier and their Astirs feature a refreshing amount of build it yourself by hand customization, and the freedom to craft your own world with a conflict you and your players will care about really makes the game shine in my opinion. Not to mention it's in built focus on both the micro and macro scale aspects of the greater conflict, each in their own time, without getting so lost in the weeds of spreadsheet style attention to detail of other mecha focused games like Lancer or Battletech.

If you've ever wanted to suit up in a giant robot and take the fight to the enemy, Armour Astir: Advent is an excellent option to fulfill that narrative fantasy.

[monochromealien]

Ymo for @crannbo

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

Armor Astir: Advent

Armour Astir Advent is a gundam and escaflowne inspired ttrpg set during a conflict between the fascist Authority, and the rebellion. and that's all you need to know about the setting, any further details are chosen by the players, it's in essence a mech game like lancer, but trying to emulate the felling of shows like Gundam, which focus more on faction fighting and the psychological toll of war.

[cadmium-free]

no context papa bombarello, enjoy

[himecommunism]

currently feeling a bit nostalgic about it so im just gonna post a bunch of the concept stuff i scribbled for the Armour Astir campaign i was in last year

some of these were posted already but its fineeeeeee

[aglennco]

You're listening to Mayday Radio #!FM, and I'll be bringing you the best music from now and then.

May Day, my Armour Astir character 📻📻📻

[rowenavart]

Designing an evil clown woman for my Armor Astir game. Her name is Crucia Calash.

[fatt-twitter-updates]

Thank you to the incredible @aurahack (@aurahack) for our new cover art! Here's a bonus WIDESCREEN version of it, too!

[Img ID: The cover art for the Palisade season of Friends at the Table. At the top, the Friends at the Table logo is in a light purple. The top of the background is a swirling purple and pink nebula that shifts downward into something like a green and blue and shiny aurora borealis that also looks something like a glassy lake surface. There are two big floating starships or structures in purple with big yellow glowing panels and multiple much smaller ships floating amongst the nebula. There's one big planet that looks almost like it's marbeled or like it's a glossy gas planet, with an orange gradient and purple swirls, and a jagged red cut is circling all the way around the planet. End ID.]

5:11 PM PST, 09 March 2023 (Source)

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AND thanks to @/dancynrew (@dancy-nrew) for this incredible map art!

[Img ID: An illustrated map of the planet Palisade. The map is called "A MAP of the PLANET PALISADE in the FINAL YEARS of the PERFECT MILLENNIUM". There is a grid-lined background where every square has some multicolored planetoids, but there's also something like roots growing between and around some of the planetoids and a few symbols and an upside down eye and eyebrow amongst the galaxy. The map itself is a flattened out version of Palisade, which is split horizontally by what seems like a crevasse, which goes through the sea as well as the land. There seems to be one big landmass, that goes into a sort of peninsula on the other side of the crevasse. Some of the larger locations from left to right are: The Wisk Sea, The Bontive Valley, The Shale Belt, Greenfield, Brecheliant Forest, The Caldera Stretch, and The Diadem. There's a many labels for smaller locations across the map. There's also some beings or figures at the top of the map that are labeled "The Five Afflictions". End ID.]

5:12 PM PST, 09 March 2023 (Source)

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Finally, if you like PALISADE, be sure to support not only us (friendsatthetable.cash) but also @/weregazelle (@weregazelle) and who made Armour Astir: Advent (weregazelle.itch.io/armour-astir) and @JyriR and @DeviantWarlock who made Strangers in the Night (yurir.itch.io/strangers-in-the-night)

5:21 PM PST, 09 March 2023 (Source)