#coc game 2

[unbroken-teacup]

i swear to god if arthur and john don’t run into petra and jan while they’re on the quest to find the black stone i will be a little disappointed (i just finished CoC game 2)

[creekschaoscorner]

This theme is continued in the CoC games as well. You mentioned Roland and Amanda- we never see anything of Roland that portrays him as anything less than a loving father, but we see the cruelty that love pushes him to. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to get her back, willing to blackmail and coerce and organize the death of an innocent woman. It’s through this he serves as a foil for Henry. Henry who loves his daughter more than anything else in the world, who considers her his moral compass, his guiding light. Henry who fails her frequently. He’s not there for Emily, gets swept up in his gambling and drinking. His debt puts her in danger. He’s willing to do anything to keep his little girl safe, but it’s his irresponsibleness that put her at risk in the first place. Roland is everything as a father Henry isn’t- a good relationship with Amanda’s mother, a stable job, a nice little house in the suburbs, meals on the table, a family pet- but he’s also everything Henry could be.

There’s also Antoine. We see first hand how much he loves the Stanczyk children. Children who might not be his, but who he loves like they are. He takes Erik in, he raises him like a son. He molds him like clay into a monster. Takes the distraught little boy killing another child in cold blood and tells him that cruelty is okay, that it’s expected, to release himself from inhibitions like morality and kindness. He is objectively a terrible father but he is never anything but a loving one. His revenge on the ones who kill his son is slow and calculated and serves a greater plan but it is still revenge. He tells Henry himself. “You know how much one will do for the ones they love”. And then- Anna. He says himself that she was like a daughter to him. Anna who he lays out on an alter, who he intends to sacrifice to be a host to a god and he calls it an honor. Don’t we all want to honor our children? Does Arthur not express the same desire? Antoine’s version of honor is warped and twisted and cruel and yet- and yet- it comes from love

Anna’s relationship with her biological father is no less complicated. Konrad starts as a family man and ends a raving lunatic. Anna watches as her father becomes dangerous, becomes a threat to her family, watches as he boards up her mother in her bedroom and leaves her to starve. Anna flees. Her father loses himself to forces outside of his control. Still in the depths of his madness he burns the remains of his infant son’s crib. Did some part of him know what he had lost?

(And when in CoC2 Nyarlathotep, in the guise of Konrad, starts a cult his followers call him Father)

We see fatherhood in many more forms than this in the CoC games. In Winslow’s doting on Petra, in Jarrett’s need for approval from Henry and Frank, even a twisted form in Senator Christian’s abuse of Mary Laval and the way he uses “fatherhood” as guise to keep her controlled

I’m not sure what my point here is aside from yeah. It’s very much a theme

It’s so fascinating to me about how much of Malevolent centers around bad or misguided fathers.

We spend ample amounts of time with Arthur’s grief and his faults, his fear of fatherhood, his failings of Faroe and the ensuing spiral afterwards. We hear of Bella’s strict upbringing, of Daniel’s controlling nature, the desire to shape his daughter into what he expected her to be, and even admitting to Arthur’s face that he intended to mold him as well, into what he thought his daughter’s husband should be. We learn of Larson’s betrayals, the sacrifices of his children: the monsters he made of those he should’ve loved, all in the pursuit of power and legacy. There’s an argument to be made even, of fragments and reflections and daughter and sons, that the King - that initial version of him now dead in all respects - was a sort of father, with John and Yellow as his residuals, his sons, his heirs, in a way. Finding their own identities now, free from the shadow of a predecessor, free to chose their own destinies, wether that is to separate themselves entirely, to scream defiantly of humanity and hope and self, or to try and reshape the visage of that dead malevolent god in desperate pursuit of love that wasn’t given, driven by a hate that was shared. What other analogy so seamlessly fits with the relationship between Arthur and Yellow than that of a neglectful father? The one who was supposed to be patient, be caring, be kind, the one who was supposed to teach this new being, this new child, about what life could be like? What love and kindness it could hold? But Arthur was too unsteady then. Too unstable to give Yellow the upbringing that he deserved. His nature was shared with John, and we’ve seen the depths of love he’s embraced. Yellow was simply nurtured wrong, encouraged down that spiral by a foster father who embraced and even venerated his rage. And similarly, in the basement in New York, we are reminded of nature and nurture, of animals and babes. Briefly, quick as a glance, we learn of the Butcher’s father, both a seething livewire and a subtle undercurrent in his motivations, manifested, perhaps, in his tumultuous relationship with failure, his self inflicted violence. Roland and Amanda receive less of the spotlight, but the foundations of everything are built upon their relationship. And now, with the Unclean, we know more of Arthur’s own father—who’s fate is known and the same as his mother’s—and his envy towards his friend, his childish jealousy and vindictive actions, of which he now condemns, having learned better, having known better. Every aspect of the narrative is seeped in fatherhood, in parenting, in children. Malam says as much by the fire: “They are our betters, our futures, our learned mistakes.” Malevolent is, at its core, about parents and children and hope.

And now, Arthur and John are on the run from a mother, on a mission given to them by a father, who’s daughter is largely a mystery, or perhaps, more familiar than we might think.

[little-flame-prince]

"You can't tell a story of personal horror and have it explore worldbuilding with complex lore and mythology at the same time"

well not with that attitude

[anim-ttrpgs]

The skill point allocation system in Eureka is very elegant.

Is the principle of evening out to 0 something that has often been used in ttrpg design? If so, can you name other games that inspired Eureka in that regard? Or did you come up with it for Eureka?

"All skills can be -n to +n with a cumulative total of 0" seems too usefull, too elegant, as to never been utilized before the year 2024.

I came up with it independently and have literally never seen it anywhere else. I have thought the same way about the Eureka! Point mechanic, though similar things have been done before in other RPGs, just never applied to mystery investigation gameplay. Why hasn't anyone done this yet?

I feel like it must have been used somewhere else at some point in the 50 years of TTRPGs that have been made, I've just never seen it. i agree it feels like too good of an idea to not, like, practically be industry standard, but then again, TTRPGs are not a very innovative industry. It's very stagnant. Most TTRPGs that have come out in the past 50 years have just been D&D clones to some degree or another, and most "innovation" I see has just been "what if we unknowingly reinvented the wheel except this time we made it hexagonal instead of octagonal," total Tesla cybertruck style innovation.

The industry is kind of uniquely set up for that. It's one of the most monopoly-dominated industries/artforms in existence, with one game (of greatly varying quality and thoughtful design between editions) completely dominating it for all 50 years of its existence and being allowed to basically fully define what a "TTRPG" is. The biggest alternative to D&D for the past 20 years has been Pathfinder, which is just like D&D but a little better designed, and before that its biggest competitor was World of Darkness, which, if you actually read their rulebooks, are also designed pretty much like D&D except for some text at the beginning which basically says "you can ignore these extremely dungeon-crawl-y rules to focus more on narrative, don't be like those dumb dungeon crawl players," which if you have been following this blog you know is a load of crap.

Call of Cthuhlu, another big veteran contender for the industry that is still going pretty strong, has been the standard for "investigation" gameplay for nearly 50 years, but it's just a Lovecraft hack of RuneQuest, which was designed for, you guessed it, fantasy dungeon crawling. That's why even though CoC adventure modules do tend to play pretty well with Eureka, most of them are still structured as a short line of like 1 or 2 clues to follow to get the PCs into a spooky scary enclosed dungeon-like monster-filled location as quickly as possible, and you have advice like (uncharitable hyperbole) "if the PCs get stuck, make evidence fall from the sky and land at their feet."

Plus, you have big "actual play" podcasts who really really champion the whole "ignore the rules when they get in the way of your pre-planned three-act-structure plot" and the mega-monopolgy with marketing money making it a selling point that if you ignore the rules enough "D&D5e can do anything."

TTRPGs are also a relatively young artform without a ton of mainstream attention until pretty recently (which, as I mentioned, has been eaten up by D&D5e, Pathfinder, and big "actual plays"), and they are a hard one to participate in because playing a single TTRPG requires a ton of time investment compared to most other popular art forms like books, video games, music, and movies.

All this results in many, many people who play and even design TTRPGs literally never having played anything that wasn't WotC-era D&D, barely one or two degrees of separation from WotC-era D&D, or "it's not important if it's WotC-era D&D or not if you just ignore the rules!" Oh and PbtA and BitD players and designers, you're not immune to this! Those are just the "D&D5e can do anything!" of the indie scene and no they really really are not the best framework/engine for every single game ever!

For all the talent, study, effort, and respect for the artform across the A.N.I.M. team, not even we are immune to this. I haven't played nearly as many TTRPGs as I would like to have before calling myself a "learned" TTRPG designer. There might be some obscure game from 2004 I've never heard of that does some of Eureka's stuff already, that if I had read, I could have made Eureka even better by improving upon and learning from the mistakes of others rather than working in uncharted territory.

So, in conclusion, to use the film industry as an analogy, it's like if, during the past 10 years of every fucking mainstream movie being about superheroes, aspiring film makers, who have watched between 0 and 1 movies that weren't about superheroes, are having the "novel" idea of "what if.. a movie wasn't about superheroes!" and then trying to make a movie not about superheroes with no non-superhero experience or study. And Eureka: The Movie is good and innovative because A.N.I.M. Studios watched a measly 10 different non-superhero movies and studied film theory before making it.

[creekschaoscorner]

HELLO. ALL CANON INFORMATION ABOUT ANNA STANCZYK, YOU SAY? BOY DO I HAVE THE LOREDUMP PREPARED FOR YOU

(This is a full summary of Anna Stanczyk’s backstory. It’s long. I apologize for nothing and am completely willing to answer any followup questions you may have)

In the late spring of 1889, Konrad Stanczyk, his wife, and their pre teen daughter Anna immigrated to America from their home in Poland. Mrs. Stanczyk had recently suffered some sort of accident that left her without the use of her legs, and the whole family was still adjusting to her wheelchair. That December baby Erik was born, and Anna was gifted a diary for Christmas, a diary that would later become very important. Her maiden aunt Beatrice Coldwell visited for the new year and left again- she lived in the nearby city of Arkham, where she was quite the socialite.

1890 began, and Konrad’s behavior started becoming quite odd. He had been on edge before the new year, but he began to become dangerous, lashing out at his family, refusing to aid his wife in getting up and down the stairs. In turn, his wife fell ill, her health slowly declining. Anna took to sleep in an abandoned house she found in the woods. It was one night, out in this house, that she heard something coming from the nearby dilapidated church. She took a lantern and investigated the sound, and it brought her to the undercroft of the church- where she found a dug up grave, and a headstone reading “Neitsh Walder”. A voice whispered into her ear the words: “The Three Soldiers”.

It was soon after that she discovered her father nailing boards over the door of her mother’s room, and made the decision to flee. She bundled up her baby brother and a few of her belongings, and left in the night. She hitchhiked her way to Arkham. Anna was alone, frightened, and didn’t know where to turn. She made the choice to leave Erik on the steps of Arkham Orphanage- a choice she would forever regret. She went to go live with her Aunt Beatrice, lying and telling her aunt that her parents were aware of her location and that she was in contact with them via letter. It was while she was staying with her aunt that she met one Antoine De Foile, Beatrice’s butler, and they developed an almost father-daughter like relationship.

Over the course of the summer of 1890, Anna dedicated herself to research. She checked out a book from the Miskatonic Library on the final resting place of the Three Soldiers, and discovered the existence of an entity known as the Black Goat- an entity she began to see. She started to fear for her own safety. Her dreams were strange, frightening- she woke to find scratches on her arms and legs, that she was missing a nail. Her aunt started to grow worried about Anna’s increasingly odd behavior, and eventually discovered her diary. Beatrice believed Anna had gone mad. In a decision that caused her an immense amount of shame, she admitted Anna to Arkham Sanitarium, and wiped her hands of the whole affair.

Anna’s dreams did not stop once she was admitted into the Sanitarium. If anything, they intensified- she dreamed of the true entity behind this, Shub’niggurath. She saw her. The Woods of a Thousand Young. She dreamed of the ritual to come, and in her dreams met a man dressed all in black- a man who told her that the events she saw did not have to play out in that way. Together they devised a plan to put a stop to the ritual, for good. Anna recorded all of these details down in her diary- but the staff of the sanitarium attempted to take it away from her. In a panic, she sent it to the only family she had left. She sent it to her little brother.

Anna would remain in Arkham Sanitarium for 31 years. Over those years her mind slowly left her as she was continuously haunted by the Black Goat. It wasn’t until summer of 1921, when the moon turned red and the sky writhed, and madness overtook the streets. She was chased by a swarm of black crows through the halls onto the roof, where they coalesced into the shape of a man with glowing red eyes. The very events of a dream she had all those years ago, the night she ventured into the church undercroft. Anna said the same words she did then: “There is nothing you can say that will convince me you are here to help.”

But unlike in her dream- she did not turn and fall to her death. No, a young man with glasses perched on her face, who she hadn’t noticed before- held out pages of her diary to her, told her his name was Jarrett, and pleaded for her help. Slowly, she came back to herself, through the fog that had overtaken her mind. The man with glowing red eyes was not as she had seen him- no, he was only one Henry MacFarland. Anna, through tears, confessed that the answers to stop what was coming lay in her diary. Her diary, which was with her brother.

Henry, Frank, and Jarrett brought her down from the roof, and they rode together back to Frank’s apartment. There they encountered Antoine, and Anna and Antoine had a tearful reunion. Anna went off to sleep and was left in Antoine’s care, as the trio left to investigate what became of Erik Stanczyk.

The next time Anna awoke, it was on a slab in a cavern below 58 Pelican Lane, as she was being lifted by the tendrils of Shub’niggurath through the portal that had been opened. Antoine had been the leader of the cult she worked so desperately to stop all along. He intended for her to be the host of Shub’niggurath. An honor, in his eyes, but no different than a sacrifice. Henry flashed a coin and was taken as the host instead, Jarrett and Antoine fought, Jarrett’s throat was slit- Shub’niggurath was erased. Something else came through the portal instead. Something that wore yellow. Anna shut the portal on it and bound what remained to a book. She left that basement hand in hand with the young Sarah Cummings, and was found by the police wandering Pelican Lane

hey :) hope youre doing good!

I REALLY enjoy your noel design, and I noticed you draw him with a lot of scars (100% here for it). In your last Noel/Oscar art you drew him with scars around his wrists. Do you have thoughts on how he got those? I'm thinking either in the dreamlands or he got kidnapped during a case and was handcuffed or smth for a While

Anyway let me hear your thoughts !!

Definitely from his time in the dreamlands, he was bond at the wrists for a pretttyyyy long time (by like ropes or organic freaky tentacles or what have you) because that man was the most unruly prisoner the KiY had in the pits for sure

[ttrpgcafe]

Heya! TTRPG trick or treat, please! 🎃👻

This one's got a backstory, so stick with me.

When I first got into TTRPGs, I learned about the big 6: D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, Cyberpunk, WoD, and Shadowrun. Of those, I've still, to this day, only played 5, and Shadowrun has remained the odd man out, despite having probably my favorite setting of all of them after Pathfinder. Part of this is its reputation for being a really crunchy game, keeping me from getting players, and part of it was that it's a very crunchy game that explains its rules SO POORLY (in recent editions at least, I'm told 3rd is the best in this department) that I couldn't even really convince my friends to get over the hump because it's hard for ME to grok the rules.

For well over a decade, Shadowrun has been my white whale, always on my shelf, never my table. So I did what any other well meaning TTRPG player does when they have a setting they like but a system for that setting they hate: I looked at every hack on the planet for every other system.

So here's your treat: every Shadowrun hack I've found!

Up first, Runners in the Shadows by Mark Cleveland:

This is a Forged in the Dark hack for the Shadowrun setting that is probably one of the better ones for emulating the "crew going on heists and doing cool shit" vibes that Shadowrun tries really hard to say is its core. I'm a sucker for FitD games in general, I think the system is *so* elegant, and I struggle to find a system more suited for the setting (SR's own rules included) than Blades, so this one has to go at the top.

With that said, there are still plenty more!

I'm going to give 2 PbtA games a shout out here, the first I've played, the second I haven't, but have heard plenty about.

Up first: City of Mist!

"But that's not a shadowrun hack!" I hear you saying behind your screen, and you're almost right, it technically isn't, BUT it's asymptote certainly approaches shadowrun, for my math nerds out there. This is a game about the (literal) power of stories, about struggles against an unseen and unknowable force trying desperately to remove every semblance of magic from your life, and about the yearning to keep your mundane life despite, or maybe in spite of, your magical adventures. City of Mist proper is a fantastic gritty noir urban fantasy game that works wonderfully as the framework for an early 6th world setting with minor tweaks, but it's sequel: Metro Otherscape, leans into the Shadowrun of it all, adding a 3rd axis along which your character can struggle, being "noise". In Otherscape, you're balancing a mundane, magical, technological life, and trying not to let any of those three overwhelm your being. A lot of cyberpunk games try to say that cybernetics reduce your humanity in one way or another, but I think Otherscape does the best job at embodying that balance in a way that isn't deeply ableist in its messaging. It's ALSO the only PbtA game I actually LIKE.

Hot take: I can't stand Moves, they annoy me to no end, and needlessly complicate an otherwise brilliant system. I might make a follow up post if anyone wants to hear my deeply bad take, but for now, just know that I'm a ttrpg heretic, and we can move on.

Otherscape completely does away with moves, and instead just lets the MC and the players decide whatever is most relevant to the action being attempted! It solves almost every problem I've ever had with PbtA games, AND kicks ass as a shadowrun stand-in, so this also deserves a place at or near the top.

Second PbtA game: Shadowrun in The Sprawl. This one is a hack of The Sprawl, a PbtA cyberpunk game in its own right, SRiTS adds the setting and magic of SR to its formula, and that's all I know about either system, due to my aforementioned PbtA-phobia. I've included this one for thoroughness, not because I have any stake in it.

Most of the other hacks I've seen use generic systems like Fate, Savage World, Cypher system, Genesys, and a hero system hack I've heard a bit about but can't find anywhere. All of this is to say that there is a wealth of options for generic systems that try to emulate SR, and most of them are fine. The last game I'm going to talk about though uses its own system, its own setting, and manages to be completely, utterly unique while capturing the vibes of SR so well that I'm still a little in awe at how well it does all of the above. I'm also not 100% certain it's a particularly good game, but the fact that I'm unsure about it should tell you that it's definitely still better than SR proper, because I KNOW that system is bad.

Without further ado: NewEdo

NewEdo is fascinating to me in that it feels like the same jump from Shadowrun that 3rd edition D&D made from 2e, or even the same kind of jump from 3rd to 4th, where you can clearly see the spine of the game it's evolving, but almost every other part of the system has been changed and improved in new, interesting ways that can still be used to tell VERY similar stories, but has its own identity at the same time. I mentioned that City of Mist is Asymptotic to SR earlier, and I stand by that assessment, but I'd say that NewEdo is closer to a parallel line, or a tangent from SR's line, if we're using the same terminology. To get into the nitty gritty, NE uses a system the author describes as "Crunchy lite easily managed", which amounts to a priority system during character creation very similar to the one SR uses, but with each tier you can select having pretty impactful ramifications for your character going forward. The easiest example is the modifications priority, at its top tier, you basically make a mythical creature into robo cop for your character's ancestry, but at its absolute lowest tier, your body actively rejects any and all implants, such that your character will NEVER have implants. On the same note, cyberware is handled REALLY well, with your body only being able to handle so much at a time, but otherwise the only ramification is a "biofeedback" line on your fate card, which I'll get to right now!

Almost every option your character picks gets added to a little personalized random d100 table on your character sheet called the fate card. This includes your character's crit rate, the possibility of a deity intervening on your behalf, or the aforementioned biofeedback line, which briefly fucks you up as you cyberware malfunctions. You get new lines on your fate card through picking certain character options, making impactful decisions during the story, and otherwise fulfilling the express goals of your character. The entire system kind of hinges on the fate card as a mechanic, which is weird, because I don't think I super love it, as it adds additional rolling to an already pretty dice heavy system.

Which brings me to the dice! New edo uses a d10 as its primary die for dice pools when rolling your characteristics like strength, speed, etc, but the rest of the polyhedral family for your skills. (D20 excluded) The skill system is a little funky, but I like it. Basically, each skill has a rank, which indicates how many dice it has, but each rank is assigned a die, each having a different cost associated with it. So my swordsmanship could be rank 4, but what that really means is that I've got 1d6, 2d4, and a d8 that I get to add to my strength rolls every time I attack with a sword. As far as resolution, you total all of your dice together to try and hit a target number. I don't have the table handy, but it's something like 15 for a moderately challenging task, and up to 40 for a nearly impossible task. I dislike addition in this context because math at the table usually slows things down, but it looks like you're probably only rolling 2-5 dice at a time at the beginning, which isn't *that* bad.

You'll notice that the two major mechanics I've mentioned so far have received pretty luke-warm responses from me, and that sounds like I hate the system, but those aren't that makes me like (\love?) this system is the back end, the choices that happen during character creation, and the things that those choices let you do. Every skill is attached to feats that unlock at different skills, magic is a skill, and its feats unlock better relationships with the Kami in your repertoire (magic is up next, I promise) and your class (path, they call it) doubles as a way to tie your character to the world, with each being associated with an in world faction which gives your character an immediate stake in the world and their community. It's a lot, but it all comes together to make something greater than the sum of its parts.

The last thing I want to talk about is the magic system, because I found it deeply interesting, as it's one of the very few skill based magic systems I've interacted with, and one of my favorites on a narrative level. Instead of spells or spell schools, your character instead develops relationships with Kami, and each new "order" or "type" of Kami your character gets access to represents them finding out how to supplicate, make an offering, or otherwise convince a given Kami to do a certain effect. If you have a relationship with the fire Kami (that's plural, not singular), then your character has learned that their local fire Kami really like a certain type of hot bun, so they offer them that hot bun after a scene where they invoked those kami, to maintain their relationship. Mechanically, this works instantaneously, you simply make a roll on your "Shinpi" skill, invoke whatever "rote" you want to use, and the relationship building is left for the GM and player to work out at the table.

(That's the last I have to say on the game itself, but I would ask anyone who has read the game and is more intimately familiar with Japanese culture to tell me if the game feels respectful to that culture, because I truly don't know, and the book doesn't list any sensitivity consultants. The author is Canadian, but spent many years sailing to and from Japan as a professional sailor, so idk. )

I guess the moral to this post, if there is one, is to acknowledge when a system or setting has faults, but learn from them, and don't ignore the good or cool stuff that's there! It might inspire you to make some amazing shit like City of Mist, Metro Otherscape, or New Edo, all of which, their relationship to Shadowrun aside, are fantastic games in their own right! (NewEdo is still up in the air, but it has its teeth in me, and that has to count for something)

That ends my trick or treat, thanks for asking!

[zapperman26]

Player's 8-Step Guide to Character Creation and Roleplaying

Being a player in any Tabletop role-playing game (TTRRG) comes with an immediate hurdle: making your character! Choosing your character options and rolling up stats is easy; Deciding on the type of person, attitude, goals, backstory, etc., and how all that will play out when role-playing is more challenging. Coming up with a unique character in which you intend to roleplay, most likely for extended durations, is never easy and can leave one wondering where to start. To help new and old role-playing game players, here is a ten-step guide to help craft your characters into purposeful, meaningful, and enjoyable additions to any campaign!

Step 1: Understand What Kind of Game You Are Playing

An excellent place to start is understanding the game and campaign you are making a character (or Importing an existing one) about!

At the most basic level, understanding and reading up on the TTRPG system you will be playing should be your starting point. It allows you to understand the options to craft your character(s) and grasp how the game will be viewed and played.

 For example, Dungeons and Dragons, even in campaigns where combat is less the focus, is constructed with it in mind down to its very bones; every class features extensive combat abilities and utilities  (even the most support-focused like Bard or Artificer), and that, naturally, would steer players to design their characters with that expectation in mind: battle. 

In contrast, Call of Cthulhu, a horror RPG system based on the HP Lovecraft Mythos, is built around social interaction, research, and the player's insignificance in the face of the unknown. Most player options are more specific and modern, with skills like accounting, psychology, and occultism that point more towards a game of investigation, attempting to outwit, outrun, and outlive the Lovecraftian horrors, with combat only as a last resort. 

A character made for one system, like D&D, will, most likely, be very different than a character created in another, like CoC, due to what said systems focus on as a game, one being more combat-focused and the other more roleplaying-focused. 

That is not to say a person can’t make a character that goes against or actively breaks the mold of the system present, but intentionality is vital. To intentionally break the rules in a way that works requires a firm understanding of what got broken in the first place. Such as playing a Warlock in D&D with Intelligence as their casting ability instead of Charisma or having Cthulhu Mythos skill points at a starting level in Call of Cthulhu. With all that in mind, establishing a firm grasp of the system you intend to play allows the character(s) you make to have the most options available and provides a better experience of how it fits (or breaks) within the game’s system. 

Once you know how to play the game(s), what the Game Master (GM) intends for you in the campaign comes next!

Step 2: Collaborate with Your Game Master and Players

Knowing the system of the game you are playing is the first hurdle; after that, knowing what kind of campaign your Game Master has in mind for you all and how your fellow players intend to interact with it is what you should learn next.

A campaign, in its length, in-house rules, setting, themes, worldbuilding, etc., is as essential to consider when constructing your character as the system rules. Every GM will have varying levels of customized elements for their campaign, no matter how inflexible the game system is. They could use a custom gameplay mechanic, setting, or even rules, so getting a good grasp of those changes and the base game (as discussed earlier) is the recipe for success when making your character at the most foundational level. It also never hurts to allow your GM to give feedback on your character to help fit into the campaign as best you can.

The relationship between GM and player(s) should always be open and receptive to what all parties can get from the games they play together. An excellent way to make that happen is collaborating with the GM during the process of coming up with and creating your character. You can make sure your ideas are both acceptable and fit in with the campaign, but also give your GM feedback on story ideas for your character and try to weave your backstory into the narrative they plan. Whatever a GM decides to help you with during character creation, your working together should ideally enhance your involvement in the campaign with your fellow players. Players whom you should also work alongside when making your characters.

Your fellow players are undoubtedly in the same boat as you, trying to develop a fun character as best they can, so why not work together? Your mileage will vary on how far you can take potential collaboration: it can be as simple as all mutually choosing unique character options and roles for a more balanced group of PCs or go as far as all to create backstories that feature each other somehow! In any case, working with your fellow players can offer much extra value for your mutual enjoyment of the game!

Naturally, this step works best for a campaign with friends or family who are easy to approach and collaborate with. Plenty of campaigns you might play will be with total strangers, but that should not stop you from trying to understand the GM's expectations (and how to meet them) going in or even trying to bounce an idea or two off a fellow player(s). 

Where do you go from here, now that you know the rules and have insights from the GM and fellow Players? It is finally time to roll your character up! 

Step 3: Roll Up Your Character!

Past all those rules, collaborations, and planning, it's time to roll up the stats and write down your character's abilities!

When and how you go about this will vary depending on how your GM wants it done. Sometimes, it's okay to roll up your character independently; some prefer to do it in a Session Zero or even a private  one-on-one, but you need to roll up your character to play!

It might seem like a know-brainer step that does not require a guide to tell, which is not wrong, but what choices and options you take should be done with seriousness. At its core, it is a game, and you should always pick what you want to play, but it is also the basis of your character. 

The stats, skills, powers, etc., you give your character will be the basis on which you interact with the game and express your PC. The following steps will go over not just how to make the best of your choices when you first roll them up but also how to make the best of what you don’t have available to you and when it's best to leave intentional gaps in your character. 

The first place to start is to see how your stats and skills can inform how you write and express your character in roleplaying. 

Step 4: Play Into Your Strengths, Embrace Your Weaknesses

Most Tabletop roleplaying games come with a collection of statistics, abilities, and skills (be they random or actively decided on), and those choices will make up the foundation of your characters in some way or another, so lean into it during roleplay.

 A typical example of character statistics is the classic six RPG attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma, with one or more thrown in depending on the game (if not the names changed around), but these are relatively ubiquitous and easy to translate into your character’s backstory and how they roleplay. 

For example, suppose you're playing a Fighter in D&D who leans heavily into physical attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution) but lacks the remaining mental attributes. In that case, you can easily write them and roleplay them as a “brain over brown” dullard with little going on in their heads. The inverse of that example, the stat block could be a Wizard, a scrawny intellectual with a big personality, but could get knocked over by a hamster if they got in a fistfight. These are two examples on the extreme ends of the spectrum, but they represent how you can express yourself by how your character’s stats ended up. 

Your stats (and how you play them in roleplaying) also roll into the class/profession/role(s) you pick for your character, be them fantasy classics (wizard, paladin, bard), more modern professions (investigator, artist, athlete), or futuristic roles (starship pilot, mad scientist, cyborg), you can then add your stats into the equation to make something exceptional!

 You could make a good-natured musician with little brains but a charismatic presence and strong body, an anti-social investigator with a sharp mind and mean right hook, or a brilliant mad scientist with incredible stage presence but little athletic talent. The statistics and the class you pick go hand in hand, so make something fun with them!

There also exist plenty of systems that don’t use the attributes mentioned above or express them way differently (EX: Slayers, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk Red, etc.), but depending on how the statistics and player options operate, the above advice should still be just as applicable despite the differences. 

In short, using the statistics and skills you are best and worst at to their fullest, in conjunction with The type of character role you are playing, is a surefire way to make a unique and fun character! 

Of course, when coming up with something “unique,” it never hurts to get inspired, especially from your favorite media!

Step 5: Don’t Be Afraid To Be Inspired

Nothing is 100% original, and you should not place the expectation on yourself that your character(s) have to be either! A crucial part of the creative process is taking what you like most from other art/media and slowly evolving it into something that fits your style, and your characters should also be something like that. 

Do you have a favorite protagonist in a fantasy series, like Harry Potter or Geralt of Rivia, that you like and want to try and make your spin on for your character in D&D? Go for it! Make a wizard who is the chosen one of a prophecy from a wizard school or a blood hunter with sorted affairs with sorceresses! Do you want a tragic backstory where your father is secretly the evil enforcer of an evil space empire, like Star Wars? Go for it! It might seem like stealing or unoriginal, but realistically, none of these character ideas or story beats will be 100% replicable and change almost immediately when put into practice. No matter how derivative, these concepts you place upon your character(s) will get filtered through your tastes, roleplaying sensibilities, and the campaign setting, then swiftly morph into something wholly new and, ideally, you as a result!

Inspiration is always the starting point for any great idea. Never feel bad or fake for trying to make something just because it resembles something that came before. You can always do whatever you can to make the details that matter, big and small, something different until it becomes something new. 

You do not need to fill in every little detail or use every possible change at the onset; sometimes, it is better to leave some gaps open so you and your character can grow as you play the game. 

Step 6: Allow For Improv and Intentionality in Roleplaying

Improv is one of the core elements of all roleplaying games, so lean into it! Any player can relate to having to come up with some stray character detail, quirk, or backstory element on the fly, and, quite frankly, it is something you should aim for when making your character(s). 

A roleplaying character is not the same as a main character in a novel; it does not require complete intentionality of actions and a slew of backstories to back that up. What matters most is enough details to make your roleplaying meaningful and engaging in the campaign. 

The amount of detail can range from (contradicting what was said above) a long-winded backstory you put countless hours into or half a page of bullet points you fill in the blanks for as you play. It varies from person to person what they feel constitutes a backstory worth using for proper roleplay, and there is no wrong answer, but what matters is the ability to be flexible with it and allow for improvisation. No backstory, no matter how well thought out and intricate, will have covered everything that might come up (EX: You wrote a 30-page backstory for your warrior where his family died and he was drafted to be a child soldier but did not write down what his favorite kind of pastry was when you encounter a baker who asks), and that is okay! Make it up! Live in the moment of roleplaying!! That is exactly how these games are meant to be played and, quite often, allow for organic expansions on the characters, making them even more fun to play!

Conversely, having details thought up for your character that you actively seek to use with intentionality never hurts. A character that is, frankly, just a pile of statistics and items with no backstory that you play with at the whims of what is directly in front of you is not a roleplaying character. That description would be the best fit for an storyless avatar in a video game like World of Warcraft, tacitly involved in an overarching narrative but not truly a participant in a meaningful capacity. Stats are not enough. It takes some measure of personal connection, stakes, and investment in the conflict(s), world, and NPCs to make a roleplaying character something that is both real and active in the campaign. 

Circling back to “just write the exact amount of backstory you feel is most comfortable,” at least some elements you can navigate your character would be the play. The backstory elements can be as simple as, for example, when a mad scientist character got their start in their profession, some friends and enemies they have (described in single sentence blurbs), and an assortment of topics they are interested in and have opinions on which they prattle on when prompted. That is not a lot, but it is enough to have some connection to how the campaign unfolds, as the GM, ideally, can either use those details to make the character feel involved in the plot or at least collaborate with you to make it work for how the campaign is unfolding.

Improvisation and intentionality, as it pertains to a Roleplaying character in a TTRPG, is a tightrope walk. You need to keep a good balance on just enough details to make the path more meaningful and structured but enough slack to have fun with it as you move forward. 

You are, ultimately, playing someone you want to keep moving forward and have fun with matters most for your character. So, make a character you want to play above all else!

Step 7: Make A Character You Want to Play and Be Played With

In a game, you, shocker, want to play something you enjoy! It is the same for a TTRPG character, in their gameplay elements, story, and how you interact with fellow players and vice versa. You should always be conscious of that fact from the moment you roll up a character to the end of a campaign.

At the most basic level, selecting your character’s classes/professions/skills, whatever the game may allow you to choose, you should go for something you would personally enjoy. You might not know if the choices you made to play with were a good fit, so try to change them if you can! Any good GM will allow some wiggle room to change or even replace your character if given a good enough reason. Do not be afraid to communicate your needs in the gameplay of a TTRPG. The gameplay is half the battle; the story is the next, and you can also have some say. 

No matter what sort of system or campaign you are in, you (as your character) still engage with it and should steer things in the direction you enjoy most. It is not uncommon for a campaign to go in a direction or two you might not like, for example, an NPC from your character’s backstory represented in a way you don’t like or NSFW elements becoming more commonplace, and in those instances do not be afraid to speak up! Talk with your GM and fellow players and either make sure the game going forward steers clear of the things you might not have been okay with or at least tone it down to help your overall enjoyment. Roleplaying games are a group activity, and everyone’s thoughts and opinions should have weight when deciding how things play out. A fact that you should also be cognizant of with how you play.

While championing sticking up for what you enjoy and avoiding what you don’t, the above paragraph is not a license to disregard what your fellow players and GM like. Remember, it is a group game, and EVERYONE has a valid voice in the proceedings; ergo, you must consider how you present yourself through your actions. Suppose you are roleplaying or making decisions actively detracting from everyone else's fun or bringing forth elements (like the ones in the previous example). In that case, you should be open to hearing them out and changing your approach to playing, just like how you’d want them to do the same.

In short, TTRPGs are about having fun, and you must do what you can to facilitate that and not hinder your fellow player’s fun in the process. 

Step 8: Have Fun!

As we just went over, playing a TTRPG is all about fun, and, for a player, that starts with the character you play. These steps and tricks aim to make creating a player character and roleplaying them much more straightforward and ( ideally) fun by giving you some good tips and tricks to clarify the process.

Conceiving a roleplaying character, one you intend to put your heart and soul into, takes time and effort. It requires a firm grasp of the rules you intend to play and some help from your GM and fellow players. You also need to embrace what you have and make the best of what you don’t, using what you are passionate about to give it life and being sure to behave like you’d want your fellow players to act. All of which, while daunting, can be done after using this guide!

Ideally, by reading this guide, the creation and execution of your roleplaying game characters will be all the more manageable, and your TTRPG experiences will be all the more memorable for it!

[rottenshotgungames]

Alright, let’s talk about what everyone’s here for: cool powers

Footfall Devlog 2

This Devlog will be covering the basics of what Footfall is and the challenges of making a game so heavily inspired by immersive sims.

So, without further ado:

What Is Footfall?

Footfall is an occult-industrial stealth-action rpg inspired by Dishonored, Mistborn, and Bloodborne. It aims to emulate the systemic ecosystem and emergent gameplay of immersive sims, particularly the fast, creative, movement-centric gameplay of Dishonored.

You play as Gifted of the Watchman, the god of stories and action. You are functional demigods, arcane in nature and forever part of a great cosmic play of chaos and change.

Some basics about how the game is played before going forward:

You get 3 Action Points at the beginning of your turn, each action point representing a period of 2 seconds.

If you do something cool, succeed on a check by 1 or less, or arrive to a dangerous Encounter fashionably late, you can get a point of Adrenaline. Adrenaline allows you to take an extra Action—even on another creature’s turn—or increase the size of the die you roll on a Check. You can only have up to 3 Adrenaline at a time.

Movement is measured in ~3 foot increments labeled "Strides." These are about the average length of a walking stride, and tend to be measured with one's arm.

There’s an interactive, yet digestible, physics engine at play. More about that can be found here.

The Question

The first question one must ask when creating a TTRPG about movement, and probably the easiest to answer, is how to make it interesting. When I say easy, I more-so mean that this is something you’re probably thinking about before you’ve even started writing anything down. This is a question you probably both asked and answered as part of the “I have a cool idea!” phase; at least, that’s what happened with me.

My answer was

Arcane Locomotion

During conceptualization, I decided a traditional class structure was right out. Instead I leaned toward a VtM-style power-centered progression system, with the various “Disciplines” (here called Gifts) covering individual forms of otherworldly movement. Because the spell system is the core of the game—something presumably every player character will be using—I decided that cost-based casting limitation (spell slots in D&D, sanity in CoC) would’ve been an exceptionally poor fit, and randomization limitation (disciplines in VtM, psychic powers in Traveller) has never sat well with me; I ultimately landed on a style of consequence-limitation using heat-management gameplay:

Entropy Quick Reference - Gained by taking the Power action. Cleared by taking an action without gaining Entropy. Once you have 3 or more, you take 2 damage and cannot use any powers for 2 rounds.

As for the powers themselves: First I’m going to provide an overview of the steps of conceptualization and implementation, then I’m going to walk you through the process of applying those steps to one of the Gifts, and finally I’ll show you the current state of each Gift (with some designer’s notes).

The process used is as follows:

Assign a unique form of supernatural movement, or an otherworldly ability that allows for unique interactions with one’s environment.

Identify the core niche of that ability, in what situations does it shine brightest? (i.e. Combat, Stealth, Support)

Create a base power (this one comes with your Xbox) that provides a type of mobility (e.g. social, hidden, group) within the established niche.

Create additional powers that support the Gift’s niche.

Playtest and identify weakpoints in powers and interesting additions to their capabilities.

Create Addendums that modify powers with those weaknesses and possible additions in mind.

Playtest again.

Design Note: A goal of this system is to create interactivity between powers—I want people to figure out cool and unique solutions to the problems they are presented, it’s a core aspect of the design ethos. That means that, during playtesting, a power doing something unexpected shouldn’t be flagged as a problem, it should be flagged as a success.

The Gift of Passage

1. Teleportation. This is gonna be our baseline power set, teleportation is what people think of when they hear “supernatural movement.”

2. Stealth. Teleportation, beyond getting people places quickly (or to places they normally can’t reach), is particularly suited for moving unnoticed.

3. Three aspects factored heavily into the design of this base power: 1.) Teleportation as a baseline. To represent this, this power resets your Momentum and Fall Height to 0. 2.) Teleportation as stealth. To represent this, not only does this power move you unseen, it actively degenerates enemy awareness. 3.) Teleportation as breaking rules. This one was pretty simple—you can teleport to a location without line of sight, so doors and walls can’t block your movement.

4. Two of the three additional powers are, at their base level of conception, just different forms of teleportation. One of them (Sharp Displace) allows you to swap places with another creature or object, and the other (Prepared Recall) is a normal teleport that reverts you back to your original position at the end of your turn. Both of these powers have stealth capabilities beyond Radio Motion’s removal of Notice, particularly Sharp Displace, which contains the following statement: “If you swap places with a conscious creature, make a Stealth check. On a success, the creature comes up with some sort of excuse as to why it isn’t where it was a second ago.” The exception to both of these rules is Flash Step, which act as a parry-and-riposte in short-teleport form (almost every Gift has one of these).

5.

6. During preliminary playtesting, one of the playtesters asked if “swapping positions with Sharp Displace also meant swapping momentums.” I immediately said, “No, obviously not,” but we both agreed that it would be incredibly cool and fun . . . so I added an Addendum that makes it so you can do that exact thing (Momentous Swap). This was the basic process for creating many of the Addendums.

7. Further playtesting has (so far) not revealed any problems. The Gift of Passage is strong in its niche, and sets itself apart from similar power sets (e.g. Gift of Doors).

Here’s the final product:

The Gift of Reaching

Supernatural Movement: Body extension

Niche: Combat, enemy positioning.

Design Note: This was one of two Gifts that had to undergo complete overhauls after testing (the other being Tempo).

The Gift of Pushing

Supernatural Movement: Kinetic projection

Niche: Combat, crowd control.

Design Note: This Gift is the most aggressive and directly combative. It also hasn’t been revisited in a while.

The Gift of Tempo

Supernatural Movement: Time manipulation

Niche: Assault, self-buffs and enemy denial.

Design Note: This Gift is one of two to be actively designed to limit its interactivity with other Gifts (the other being Possession). Time powers are REALLY difficult to balance.

The Gift of Doors

Supernatural Movement: Portals

Niche: Support, group and object movement.

Design Note: This is the gift that most heavily engages with the physics engine, and everyone who picks it up has an ungodly amount of fun (they also tend to be STEM majors).

The Gift of Shadows

Supernatural Movement: Shadow form and manipulation

Niche: Stealth, remaining hidden while acting upon one’s environment.

Design Note: This one is inspired by an old forum RP superhero character I had. It was also kinda lacking up until the recent light update—note to all would-be shadow-ability designers, they work better with light sources.

The Gift of Possession

Supernatural Movement: Entering and manipulating living creatures

Niche: Stealth, social. Hide in plain sight.

Design Note: Up until this point, every iteration of Dancing Puppet has been too powerful in combat and too weak out of combat. Adding the “No direct harm” clause has balanced it out quite a bit, but I’m still not happy with it. Gonna ask a player in the next playtest to take it in hopes that they might inspire some innovation.

The Gift of Mirrors

Supernatural Movement: Self duplication

Niche: Support

Design Note: Matthew Mercer made my favorite 5e subclass and I shall forever live in shame. I haven’t played D&D 5e in years, and I still love Echo Knight.

Conclusion:

There are two big lessons that I want to leave you with today:

Weaponize Playtesting.

Have your cake and eat it too.

When people think of playtesting, they often see it as solely a means to find flaws within their game or to reaffirm design decisions that they’ve made. If we extrapolate that idea—expand its scope—what we come to understand is that playtesting is a means of gauging which aspects of your game that players find engaging or frustrating, and if we look at it from that perspective then we can use playtesting data to determine how to make engaging additions. Sure, players don’t always know what they want, but even if we just look at how they’re playing we can see how they’re attempting to interact with the game and thereby deduce what additions to the formula might make the game more fun for them. This process is what I mean by Weaponizing Playtesting, using playtesting data to help plan how you want your game to develop in the future.

As for having your cake and eating it too, I have a sincere preference for classless games (I never really liked PbTA style Playbooks all that much either), but I understand the appeal of class based games. Classes give you structure, they give you a basic plan to follow in terms of how your character will develop all united under a connective theme. For new and experienced players alike starting with a class then building a character around it can be incredibly helpful, perhaps even inspiring; however, classes are ultimately restrictive, they require you to play within their rules—your understanding of your character’s capabilities will always be, by necessity, grounded in the abilities of their chosen class. Ultimately, I wanted the structural inspiration that classes can provide and the freedom of choice that comes with classless play—the Gifts were my solution, and I think they’ve done a stellar job of providing both.

Self Promotion:

Hey y’all, sorry for the short hiatus. Work has been killing me recently.

If you wanna check out my other games, and get updated when the Footfall free playtest goes live, follow me on Itch.io! If you want more devlogs, and more rpg design talk, follow me here or on twitter.

Either way, I hope you have a great night and a great day.

[a-crawling-chaos]

i have very vague knowledge of the harlanverse or whatever the coc games + malevolent are called (read: summaries on discord bc i was asking about the lighter, which is a whole other can of worms)

but basically is the tmagp universe kinda like coc game 2? an alternate universe where for some reason, because of some choice made, there's something fundamental missing. something that influenced all of the characters in the "original" world.

so it's just the same characters, on a different pathway? with different Horrors?

[rimeswithpurple]

Thank you for the tag @bookish-bogwitch & @ic3-que3n!

Good news! I finally designed my Christmas card! Bad news is I now have to carve it 😩 I’ve been block printing my family’s Christmas card for the last 7 years because I’ve become more sentimental about the holidays since becoming a parent and I can’t stop myself from being so goddamn extra. I even go so far at to mark the edition of my print run. A few of my friends and family get really excited for them and I like the idea that my loved ones receive a piece of my art every year. Designing it in procreate instead of layers of tracing paper was such a game changer! So, this is the finalized design:

Snickerdoodles are the first cookie we make during the Christmas season since I have all of the ingredients already in my pantry and it's super quick and easy.

I’m only doing a 2 layer reduction print because I really don’t have time this year.

I just finished my first test print:

Hopefully, I can knock these out by the end of the week and I can get back to COC! 🤞🤞🤞

Tags under the cut!

@valeffelees @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @youarenevertooold @iamamythologicalcreature @theimpossibledemon @theotherhufflepuff @thewholelemon @artsyunderstudy @alexalexinii @prettygoododds @fatalfangirl @facewithoutheart @stardustasincocaine @nightimedreamersworld @hushed-chorus @orange-peony @best--dress @leithillustration

[theliterarywolf]

Seriously, what's CoC?! I'm waiting for context but I can't find it ;-;

CoC, or Corruption of Champions, was (technically still is, but put a pin in that) an online text-based fantasy RPG game made by Fenoxo.

You would start out as a character who was chosen to go forth and purge corruption and evil from the land and, of course, while that was your main objective you also had to worry about surviving hostile monsters.

Oh, yes, and also try not to succumb to corruption. Which could come in all manners of ways including, but not limited to:

Drinking too much Succubus Milk and becoming a horny succubus

Drinking too much ProBova (I think it was called) and becoming a horny hucow

Succumbing to dark magic

Having a demon possess your tits or your dick (depending on which one was bigger)

Getting addicted to being milked in a farmer NPC's barn

Becoming a mindless, horny sex-slave to any number of antagonist NPCs

Becoming a broodmare to any number of antagonist NPCs

And many, many more.

The game itself is fun for brief bits and pieces though it is obvious that the creator has a leaning for the lesbian and M/F varieties rather than M/M due to the imbalance of scenarios.

Now, as for why I said 'technically is' early on, it's because the game was pretty much left unfinished in favor of the creator shifting focus to their sci-fi RPG Trials in Tainted Space (or TiTS). In fact, if you go on Fenoxo's website right now, you can see--

...

... Ay yo, what the FUCK?! Since when was there a Corruption of Champions

2?!?!?!

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I enjoyed the Taskmaster finale episode, it took a while but seemed like everyone had finally loosened up in the studio and was having fun. They made the right call in saving the game show for the last task, that was very funny. Though it was genuinely a bit weird to see John Robins ironically play an intentionally bad gameshow host that was so similar to the actual game show host he actually played in Beat the Internet. Really underlines how bad that show was that they couldn't make a worse show than it when they were literally trying. It was really funny though. Sophie especially.

And their game show is the funniest I've found the Steve/Nick team all season. Steve's character was probably more impressive but I found Nick's character funnier, doing an idea he hadn't wanted and choosing to also play it as a character who didn't want to do it.

I think Nick Mohammed might be the biggest surprised standout for me overall, now that the season's over. In the early episodes I enjoyed his little cinnamon roll thing, but by the end I sort of caught on to how his humour works too and was loving every time he was on screen. Though Joanne McNally, whom I disliked going into this season, really won me around too by the end.

I called before the season started that John Robins would do very, very well. Not just because I like him, but because he's 1) competitive enough to try really really hard, 2) has spent years hanging out with Alex Horne and playing those little games that Alex comes up with so he has practice at this (he mentioned on the radio once that he and Alex played No More Women - later changed to No More Jockeys for obvious good reasons - in pubs), and 3) there are years of documented radio evidence of him being good at silly games, particularly any games that require quick or lateral thinking, and quick thinking is the skill that's transferable skill to the most aspects of Taskmaster. Then I spent all season watching it while being genuinely tense, treating it like a real sport because I wanted to be right so much (I did ease off the tension a bit in the last couple of episodes as the winner became clear). However, even I can't say I called in advance that, out of all contestants on UK Taskmaster in the regular seasons (outside of NYTs and COCs), John Robins would come out top of the leaderboard in total points overall, and in points per task. Coming out 8 whole points ahead of second-place Dara O'Briain in total points.

It's possible that the reason we didn't get as much of John being furious as we were expecting in this season isn't the editing, it isn't that he's now sober and enlightened and not in such a dark place, it's just that he didn't fuck up enough things to be worth yelling about. Well done to him.

Congratulations, John, fantastic season, I'm very very pleased for you. Now release Howl on Bandcamp like you said you would months ago. I haven't forgotten about that, you know.

[rayfishandchips]

Torchwood as a call of cthulhu run: ideas

So last time I thought the dw episode "the giggle" can be a great coc story if the kp do some little adaptations and add some eldritch.

BUT. You know what would be even better? Torchwood.

Torchwood is literally about a team of regular humans fighting alien threats, defending humanity, and ending up tragically. All the team members have a distinct responsibility within the team. No need to really ADD san dropping stuff, just rearrange the original alien enemies and turn them into similar but cthulhu-appropriate stuff. Torchwood stories would make great coc material, and it works all the better with non-torchwood fan pls.

The easier running plan would be to just use the core plot. But this might mean losing some of that torchwood feels in terms of in-team dynamics.

Another possible plan would be like this. (note: handouts are info given only to one pl. The players can't directly access each other's handouts.)

Jack: major npc, because you can't give away all that backstory to a player.

Ianto: depends, especially if kp plans to play that cyberwomen plot line.

Handout 1 (HO1) Gwen. Give pl info and say the HO1 player joined the agency (torchwood) because they came in with pizza to investigate. Basically just the Gwen backstory.

Handout 2 (HO2) Owen. Give the pl the Owen backstory, lost wife to alien pest and joined on Jack's invitation.

handout 3 (HO3) Tosh. Same thing, give the pl the Tosh backstory.

usually I prefer HO games with 3 players (it's big enough to form a team but still managable) but the kp can also have Ianto as a HO4. The other three characters don't have backstories locked so tightly and directly to plot, so I would suggest keeping them as HO characters, but again it's all up to the kp. It is also up to kp to decide exactly how much info HO contain.

Note that players don't have to necessarily choose their professions based on the original character their HO is based on. For example the HO2 pc can choose to be a nerd police officer instead of a doctor. The HO determine the most basic backtory and team goals so the basic torchwood team characteristics is kept, but HOs should not restrict pc generation in any way (if they do restrict pc design then it's not coc anymore it's just torchwood rp).

So now there's a lot of possibilities. See torchwood as a organization of investigators united for one goal. pc can have a huge range.

I would personally insist we have Jack as a npc because this is going to be so fun for the players. As captain he can help keep overall plot more or less in check, and other torchwood members (pls) doubting him is literally canon plot. Helpful major npc that seems to be concealing info? Classical. Fun team interactions ensured.

If kp would like to include that "Owen kills Jack" bit somewhere, make sure one HO (preferably HO1) contains the info that Jack can regenerate.

I should write this one as a complete module someday and run it. If it works I may be able to release it somewhere.

[pradnyesh1008]

COC: Journey So Far #1

Long time no see, huh? Yeah, I know. My bad. Life's been a whirlwind lately, and that thread issue was like a constant migraine. But hey, it's sorted now. Happened a few days ago actually. The reason? Well, let's just say it was... interesting. But I'm not here to rant, so let's leave it at that.

Now, onto the main stuff. This will be long so…

I've changed the name of the game. Might change it again, who knows? The universe's name probably won't change though, because everything starts and ends with The Golden Throne. All the events are happening because of it, for it. But hey, if you come up with a cool name that fits the bill, I'm all ears!

The first book, for now, is called Crown of Conquest. As the name suggests, there's gonna be some conquering done by our MC due to politics, scheming, and a whole lot of other reasons. So yeah, war is coming. Not as big as you might think, but it'll set the stage for violence, gore, and all that jazz. I want you guys to get a taste of how wars are fought in this universe. I don't want anyone caught off guard when the big wars happen.

Back to the topic, progress has been slow. I'm at about 10k words right now. Why so slow? Well, between studies and other less productive activities {yeah, I'm looking at you, Girl (if you are reading this)}, writing has taken a backseat. But I'm planning to update this twice before Hot D season 2 releases. So now, I'm gonna write as much as possible.

Remember the Gazebo scene? Yeah, that was a tough one. Some of you were upset, saying it was torture, misery for the MC. I did give warnings several times before the scene happened but still, some folks were taken aback. In this game, there will be several scenes which will be morally complicated for characters. I've written these lines in my rework too but I'm gonna share here so you might understand the concept of this game:

"This is the reality of your position, the reality of power. It’s not just about wearing a crown; it’s about making decisions that can change lives. It’s about carrying the weight of those decisions, living with the consequences. It’s about understanding that every choice you make will have an impact, will create ripples that will touch everyone around you. It’s about realizing that sometimes, there are no right choices, only less wrong ones. And it’s about having the courage to make those choices, no matter how difficult they may be."

That's the whole point of this game.

As for the asks, there are 40+ of them. Most are ROs related. I know I said I'd answer them, but I don't want to spoil the personalities of the ROs before your first meeting with them. So, I'll wait till your first interactions with the ROs are done. Other asks related to history and world are so good. Seriously, you guys have some very interesting and damn good theories and questions. I can't believe how much you all thought from this small 100k WIP. They are so fun to read. And the rest of the asks, bug related and other stuff, don't worry. I know about them, and they will be resolved in the rework. I'm also going to drop our Mentor's details along with their portraits soon. So, be ready for it.

And lastly, If I haven't forgotten anything. Thank you so much to all of you who are supporting this and are really interested in this game. Seriously, thank you.

Catch you on the flip side,

Pradnyesh

[eccentric-nucleus]

i'm gonna be talking about the weird porn game stuff i'm working on now, so you know, watch out

so as you may have gathered from my various posts, i've been working on the hell game 2 engine. currently i have events running mostly-correctly from data files, but i don't currently have state & pc data hooked up correctly so i can't actually e.g., test out various different sex scene variations based on the pc's bodytype. given one of the big failures of hell game (the first) was that i never really got complex event interactions working, i should probably think up some multi-stage demo events and get them working early on, so i don't end up repeating the same mistake

anyway as i have been putting this together i've been reflecting on the stuff i was dissatisfied with with hell game. unfortunately for me one of those things was "the sex scenes weren't as parametric as i wanted". hell game tended to break sex scenes down based on fundamental body plan (what i usually call 'bodytype' b/c that's the variable name for it in the code). that was stuff like: biped, centaur, quadruped, naga, snake, and 'other'. that's already a lot of totally-different variations but given i also let people change size there did kind of also need to be at least some size-based changes. but that's even more stuff to write for a single sex scene to have full coverage.

(this kinda thing is why i love to bring up the whole thing about nagas having a thigh gap in TiTS. they didn't want to change the scene blocking for all the doggystyle sex scenes! you can just say "between your thighs" either way!! i mean i get it, just, lol.)

but the other thing with hell game is that it was always uhhh a very early demo. it was basically a collection of contextless sex scenes with demons, and while there are worse things for a game to be, i did kinda have aspirations of, you know, plot, story, named characters that weren't just procgen demons, etc. so one of the things i've been working on currently is a ~design doc~ that covers setting & story details in a concrete enough way that i can reference off it and not end up writing myself into a corner.

and that gets us to the weird porn part of the post. i haven't fully committed to the current setting concept (scifi space station sucked through an interdimensional portal so it's now orbiting around hell, a la your dooms and hellpoints and the like; i feel like i'm maybe being a little too derivative here) so i won't go into too much detail but on the whole there is probably gonna be a more pronounced, you know, horror/grotesque influence. we'll... see how that works given that it is also a porn game

like yeah yeah plenty of porn games are kind of libidinal nightmare realms. coc had the parasitic dick worms. people love gross sex stuff. i feel like i kinda lost touch with a lot of my audience and now i spend more time around, uh, normal people who don't have deeply-rooted fixations. currently the first encounter i have outlined for this is uhhh a reanimated zombie who... lemme just paste the description in

A thing that was once a dead body, overtaken by something new. Its skin is a faded grey and its muscles are overgrown, proportions inhuman: shoulders impossibly wide, arms and legs slabs of striated muscle. It moves with an inhuman gait, as if the thing inhabiting it is still getting adjusted to human articulation.

There's a squirming thing wrapped around its head, all leathery purple-black flesh. A central mass covers the corpse's head: face smooth, back of the head a mess of overlapping tentacles. It has many long octopus-like tentacles that fan out across its shoulders and back. The tentacles trail down its body, clamped tight to the skin, before they sink into its body across its shoulders, chest, and back, squirming under the skin like gigantic veins. The skin around the punctures is painted with purple-black bruises. Glowing green ichor pulses through its body, pumped into it from its penetrating tentacles, feeding its muscles with unnatural energy. Its skin is a faded grey, streaked with ash, save for where its glowing-green blood flows, forming branching lines of bulging veins that cover its shoulders and chest.

A single loose tentacle extends from its face like an enormous proboscis, tapering in wormlike rings to a squirming tip, slavering shed ichor in gummy lines down its bare chest.

Its cock hangs heavily between its thighs, perpetually bloated and half-hard, with its glowing green ichor visibly pumping through its altered flesh. Its massive, oversized balls churn and lurch behind the fat stalk of its dick, pulsing with burgeoning larvae. Thick, translucent grey pre perpetually spills from its bloated glowing-green cocktip, painting wet smears of fluid down its monstrously-muscular legs.

it talks to you and asks if you wanna get pumped full of squirming zombie larvae so it can reproduce and reanimate more corpses. a lot of the encounter design is very much "what if you could fuck this DOOM monster"

anyway, that's like, normal. that's completely usual actually. having a cop fetish is what's weird and disturbing. okay okay that's just dumb glib moralizing i don't actually think that. but i mean, it is super weird to write stuff like that and then go back into the normal realm where people keep talking about college jocks or w/e.

but before i do much more writing i gotta hammer out the rest of the engine. next up: a lot of variable storage & thinking about how to separate npc data from the events they take part in. that's all stuff that needs to get coded regardless of which setting i go with

[incorrect-dimension20]

Hey! I saw your poll about which campaigns you were going to do quotes for and how you didn't include some campaigns because you didn't enjoy them that much and that just made me wonder-

If you are willing, can you rank the campaigns from your fav to least fave? I'm always curious what people think, so no judgement- just curious!

Yes! However, I will warn you- I have some... if not controversial, at least unpopular, opinions. This is a subjective, not objective list.

Burrow's End

Fantasy High

A Starstruck Odyssey

Fantasy High Sophomore Year

Fantasy High Junior Year

The Seven

Neverafter

Mentopolis

A Court of Fey and Flowers

Mice & Murder

Unsleeping City 2

Misfits & Magic

Unsleeping City

Escape from the Bloodkeep

Crown of Candy**

Dungeons & Drag Queens

Tiny Heist

Ravening War*

Coffin Run

Pirates of Leviathan

Shriek Week

*Up until this point, I loved every season, and even afterwards, I think they are all good objectively, I just didn't enjoy the genre or type of story

** Spoilers for COC Okay. I know I might be the only person in the world to not have COC in my top 5, but... it has nothing to do with the campaign and everythings to do with me. Stories like Game of Thrones make me deeply uncomfortable and stressed, and (SPOILER FOR COC) PC deaths are not something I handle well normally, and as someone whose most important people are my two sisters, any media with a sibling death is something I cannot consume normally. I think COC is a beautifully told story with amazing PCs, DMing, etc... and I regret watching it for my own mental wellbeing.