#disparateum

[rookthebird]

weirdest tabletop experience i ever had

be me in 2022

download a bundle of tabletop games at 3 am

find a giant pdf labeled "act one"

it's a game played by only exactly three people on different levels of reality.

you also play alternate universe versions of your characters on different levels in reality

secrets in the book are written in mirror writing

the whole book is an in-universe preserved text by someone in a different universe

i am so into this game.

best thing i've ever read.

i tell all my friends about it the next day.

"sounds cool, what's it called?"

i can find no evidence of this game.

i can find no evidence that this game ever existed.

i'm not even sure what bundle it was in.

all my friends develop the theory that this game is a dream i had.

they tease me about The Time Bird Dreamed An Entire TTRPG That Could Only Be Read In A Mirror

i find the game three years later

it's about dreams

anyway if you wished Invisible Sun was weirder you may enjoy Disparateum by Rathayibacter

[rathayibacter]

found a normal website

[rathayibacter]

ay might as well, i dont do enough self promo

ive got a lot of games but ill focus on the Big Three

first up is KATABASIS, an afterlife pointcrawl inspired by Dark Souls and The Things They Carried. you play as spirits using your emotional baggage as equipment to try and fight your way out of a cold, concrete afterlife. currently in progress, im in the middle of the next update for it. my favorite part of it is how players and gms both get a ton of powerful, weird tools to use against each other, and are constantly adjusting their toolkits to challenge one another.

next we've got BXLLET, a ten-page zine about post-apocalyptic cowboys wandering a barren wasteland and trying to provide whatever help they can. bullets are your xp, but can also be spent to instantly kill any enemy. do you hoard power, or bring about change? can you fix the world with violence? favorite part is the huge number of really cool supplements folks have written for it, collected here. there's like fifty classes, a boatload of adventures, and hosts of funky little modular rules bundles to plug into the super simple base game.

lastly we've got Disparateum, my weird unfinished arthouse ttrpg about a city that exists at the crossroads of all possible worlds. once i dont have as much on my plate, i really gotta come back to this one cuz ive got a ton planned. already included is the best setting writing ive ever done, detailing dozens of locations across many kaleidoscopic reflections of the same city. explore a museum-dungeon full of art and magic, buy ice cream from a wizard, chase lanterns through a statue garden in your dreams, haggle for stories from dragons made of genre, get in forum arguments on a fantasy internet run by spiders. favorite part is Knick-Knacks and Trinkets, which include some teasers for Act II, as well as a set of three fun little bookmarks you can use in various ways in the game. one's an untethered location that you can find wherever you stick the bookmark into!

Alright, it has been 7 months, time to make a callout for any indie ttrpg creators that wants more attention and spotlight on their creations!

Whoever wants to get their stuff promoted, post it below, I might even make a review video on it!

[psychhound]

hey yall!!! new bundle :D

this is my 14 for 14 ttrpg bundle to pay off some of the debt from my top surgery!! you get 14 games and homebrew for 14 bucks, which is gonna run until june 14th (my birthday!!)

my top surgery was absolutely life changing and has made me so much more comfortable, confident, and happy. i dont regret it in the least. i also got hit with some surprise bills afterward that have me pretty heftily in debt because of it

some very kind souls have donated their games to help me pay some of this off, which was just so incredibly generous. which means its not just my games in here!! lots and lots of cool stuff, please check it out!!

in the bundle:

ttrpgs:

[BXLLET> : a game about systems of violence and power in the weird west apocalypse

disparateum: a dream-like reality-bending game where you hop worlds and tell strange stories

little celestial fieldwork guide: a city exploration photography game where you divine hidden spirits and take photos of them

beach day!: a system agnostic party bonding minigame where characters swap gifts and secrets

what they once feared: a solo journaling game where you play a folkloric monster forced to choose your path

the narrator paradox: a one page solo game where you play a storybook narrator whos protagonist has gained agency and is trying to change the story

the fool who got married (extended): a duet epistolary game of female hardship and connection in 1848

explorers of the forever city: a rules-light, fantasy role-playing game about ordinary people making extraordinary discoveries

homebrew:

riders: a pact for moth-light by justin ford, a fitd game. tame, bond with, and ride the terrifying predator moths

witch: a class for d&d 5e. be a con-based half-caster with curses, familiars, and a whole new way of doing spell slots

harmony with the wind: a ghibli-inspired d&d 5e pack with 5 feats, 4 backgrounds, 4 races, 6 monsters, and 3 subclasses

fairytale/feywild: a pack for d&d 5e with 1 background, 2 races, 1 subclass, and unique timekeeping mechanics for the feywild

burger wizard: a d&d 5e compatible narrative rpg about working as magical kitchen staff in a fantasy restaurant

argyth's arcane companion: 4 wizard subclasses, 3 feats, and 17 new spells for d&d 5e

you can get all of this for 14 bucks until june 14th!! it would really mean a lot to me for yall to check it out and also spread the word :D

check it out on itch!!

[theresattrpgforthat]

Tabletop Trick or Treat! 🍬🍫🎃🔮🍬🎃🍫

Oh my you have so much candy already... I think it's time to Trick you a little!

I want to shout out @rathayibacter, the designer for BXLLET, which I didn't realize was so deliciously magnificent until I was invited to review a supplement for the game. It did not take much for me to fall for it, and I'm so happy that I've gotten to recommend it to others at least twice on this blog.

Rath is one of those designers that feels extremely indie to me, and I feel like while there's more to their design aesthetic than just the word "punk", I think that word is the one that comes the closest off the top of my head. Their other two major games, Disparateum and Katabasis, explore themes of liminality and states of transition, with themes of death added for flavour. Their games are both specific and intentional, and I love that about them.

[rathayibacter]

Rath's TTRPG Post!

Hey yall, been long enough that I should really write another of these. I'm Rath and I make weird tabletop games! I've got a lot of games already out there, and even more in the oven, so this post exists to help organize them all and give you a jumping-off point if you want to check out my work. Without further ado,

[BXLLET>

BXLLET is a post-apocalyptic cowboy game about the nature of violence. It hands players incredibly lethal characters, then asks those characters to try and find their way in the world. If all you have is a hammer, how do you stop seeking nails?

Every BXLLET character begins with a single bullet on their person, and can always spend a bullet to kill someone. Collecting more bullets unlocks your archetype's unique powers, making you an increasingly imposing threat—and juicy target. However, even as you become bloated with potential violence, you'll find plenty of problems escape easy solutions. Sure, you can always kill, but can you cut out the rot that runs deeper than any individual bandit, warlord, or capitalist? In a world fighting to rebuild itself from disaster, are you a wandering hero, or just a murderous tool of the old age? Can you help build a better future, or are you doomed to haunt its outskirts?

Thanks to two game jams and a whole lot of love, BXLLET also has a ton of additional modules, spilling over with scenarios, archetypes, factions, mechanics, and alternate settings. Here's a big list of them! Check them out, they're fucking incredible.

KATABASIS

KATABASIS is a tactical combat afterlife-crawl, where spirits fight using weapons and armor made of their emotional baggage to try and escape a surreal concrete afterlife. It's all about putting together strange builds to face off against bizarre monsters, all while meeting other stranded spirits and exploring the tangled world you're trapped in. If you delve deep enough, fight hard enough, maybe one day you can find a way to return to life.

KATABASIS is a work in progress, with the full game still a ways off. I'm currently working on the next update, The Highway Down, where players will fight their way across perilous highways tangled through a hanging city. Even so, the game's already packed with characters, equipment, monsters, and maps.

So go! Gather your painful memories, bare your petrified heart, kill the psychopomps and shatter the gates of hell. There might be no escape, but we'd rather die a thousand times more than give up looking.

Disparateum

Disparateum welcomes you to the Named City, a place at the edge of our world and the center of all others. Residents of the Named City wander across the full spectrum of possible worlds, visiting them as one might visit another neighborhood. Like KATABASIS, it's also a work in progress, but already contains pound-for-pound more raw ideas than anything I've ever written. It's a dense, strange, silly, and colorful game, and a gushing love letter to roleplaying in general.

Disparateum is a game for a Knight, a Thief, and a Seer, who explore the Named City in search of adventure and change. Here, shared dreams settle over the city at night; here, our reflections plot revenge from the opposite side of every mirror; here, dragons hold court to debate ownership of stories; here, museum corridors tangle their way through the past and into other histories; here, spiders weave a network of WiFi connections and host dense egg sacs of websites; here, sprawling statue gardens grow beneath our souls. Welcome to the Disparateum. Enjoy your stay.

Unskilled Labor

Unskilled Labor is a game about struggling to get by in the rotting corpse of capitalism. But this time, you have superpowers!

Unfortunately, the superpowers will not let you steal back the time you wasted in dead-end jobs, nor will they let you topple the system and fix everything singlehandedly. But, hey, did you really expect them to? The work to make a better world remains to be done, and maybe now it'll be slightly easier. Manifest a customer service persona to fight your friends' landlord, use perfect timing to escape the cops, coordinate supernaturally disruptive protests of an oil pipeline. Play using resumes as character sheets and calendars as battlemaps. Manage your well-being (as much as you're able), struggle against the tides of Western society, and spit in the face of authority. It's not a glamorous power fantasy, but hopefully it reminds you not to give up the fight.

Charcuterie

Charcuterie is a series of zines, each about 40 pages long, collecting various little experimental games, writings, and doodles. The first two have five ttrpgs each, four being updated versions of games I'd previously released and the fifth being exclusive to the zine. The third is instead a collection of poetry and short stories, though I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a streak of game design through it all anyway.

IMMORTAL Pop!bat 2: funK.O. (Definitive Edition)

Have you ever wanted a miniatures wargame with thirteen thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine unique statblocks? Have you ever wanted to microwave your friend's limited edition metallic blue Batman Funko Pop, but lacked the game mechanical justification to do so? Have you ever wanted to waste an entire paycheck on a terrible idea? IMMORTAL Pop!bat 2: funK.O. (Definitive Edition) has you covered. With two pages of rules and sixteen hundred pages of Pop!batants, with IP!b2:fK.O.(DE) you'll be making terrible life choices in no time.

Stationkeeping

In Stationkeeping, you've inherited a run-down satellite from your late aunt. Slowly you'll patch it up, add new rooms, and fill it with memories. The game's contained entirely on a small stack of handwritten index cards which you can carry around with you, slowly progressing the game by going out of your way to enjoy the little things in your day-to-day life.

And More!

I've got even more stuff over on itch, and I sneak occasional glimpses at my current projects into the #ttrpgs tag here on tumblr. Keep your eyes peeled!

And of course, I'm always happy to chat. If you're ever curious about something I've made or am making, if you enjoyed something or had thoughts on it, if you just wanna say hi, please reach out! Games are my passion, and I love nothing more than to talk with other passionate people. Until then, I'm signing off!

[rathayibacter]

ooh hell yeah! gonna submit Disparateum, cuz if any of my games deserve to be adorned w the words "award-winning" it's that one.

Disparateum's a game set in a city at the edge of our reality, which overlaps and intersects with every other possible reality. it's a place where you can travel through dreams, stories, and time as easily as you can slip into a strange alleyway or down onto a subway platform. if you've ever wanted to explore a fractal museum-dungeon run by a three-winged angel, chase a lantern containing your deepest wish across a shifting dreamscape, or swordfight your reflection in the geode-palace of your mind, this is the game for you.

The Sprinties, December 2022

It's time. Time for The Sprinties. The Sprinties Awards are a ttrpg awards show where if you submit your game, YOU WILL WIN. That's right. No entrance fee. No judges panel. No snubs. No drama. Want to be an award-winning ttrpg designer? YOU CAN.

The rules for The Sprinties are simple:

-Submit your game by reblogging or replying here or by replying to the post on twitter -YOU WIN The awards period runs for the duration of December 2022. In weird niche cases I reserve the right to deny a Sprinty to a game, but I don't ever expect to have to do this. Future Sprinties Awards shows will be hosted whenever they seem like they are needed.

[rathayibacter]

that Disparateum post blowing up has been genuinely incredible. it's one thing to pour time and energy into making art, knowing one day someone's gonna get to have a cool experience discovering it. it's a completely different thing to see that happen, see it resonate with someone and see that energy spread out to a bunch more people. thank you, @rookthebird, means a lot!

[rathayibacter]

RATHGAMES

hey yall! just added community copies for all my games that were falling behind on em, and figured it'd be a good time to go over everything ive released so far!

KATABASIS: after your death, you wash ashore in a sunless, brutalist afterlife. use your emotional baggage from life as weapons and tools as you explore this tangled purgatory and try to find a way to escape.

DISPARATEUM: there are an infinite number of worlds in the Disparateum, and the Named City connects them all. explore a city where museum hallways turn into fractal labyrinths, where outdoor markets are held in dreams, where stories are ruled by a council of dragons, where your internet connection is routed through a giant spider, where mirrors hide cruel secrets.

BXLLET: bullets are precious in the apocalypse, despite everyone's efforts to move on from them. with one bullet, you can decide who lives and who dies. with five, you can unlock strange and alien powers. with twenty, you can rule the world, or wipe it out again.

(ive also got RXLOAD, a love letter to all the fantastic BXLLET supplements written since the game's release, and DXMON, a collaboration with Jon East to adapt BXLLET's mechanics for a Chainsaw Man-inspired setting)

CHARCUTERIE: three zines, each about 40 pages long, each with a heaping handful of small games, writings, doodles, and other projects.

ive also got some smaller projects under the break!

STATIONKEEPING: a small index card game for carrying around in your back pocket. slowly repair a space station as you live your life, and occasionally meet friendly aliens or connect your station to someone else's.

NOT WEAVERDICE: a super small Worm proto-ttrpg. i feel like rigid, strictly-defined point-buy power systems go against the strange, flexible, deeply unfair powersets present in Worm, so i made a short guide to making strange, flexible, deeply unfair powersets fun to play with.

MORTAL POPBAT: a 600-page funko pop wargame. build your army and brutally wipe out your enemy's POP!batants. if you actually play this, let me know so i can point and laugh.

WINTERGREEN: a ttrpg campaign that fits entirely in a mint tin. help a small frigid community in a series of short, interconnected quests.

[rathayibacter]

oh this reminds me, ive still gotta add the Ritual of Obliteration to Disparateum Act II

Important game design proclamation announced from the mountain top of the day:

If your game doesn't have a rule expressly approving the ritual burning of character sheets on player death I assume the implication is that you don't in fact want me to do that, in which case you really ought to correct the error and penitently incinerate all remaining copies of the game, if you ask me (which you should, if you ask me)

[rathayibacter]

ttrpg trick or treat!!!!!!!! :D

here's a little snippet from Disparateum Act II!

[rathayibacter]

its homestuck day! in honor of the media that permanently rewired my brain heres Disparateum for free!

[rathayibacter]

Pulling Rath's Teeth Bundle

Hey yall! I'm getting knocked around by some medical costs right now, and could use some help getting back on my feet. I've managed to scrape together the cash I need to get dental surgery this Friday, but I'm gonna be pretty bone dry (badum tsh) after that.

So! With the help of some incredible friends of mine, I bring you the PULLING RATH'S TEETH BUNDLE! For $5 you can get every big project I've released thus far, or for $20 or more you can get a STAGGERING 56 GAMES AND SUPPLEMENTS, including a number of things exclusive to this bundle! Check it out, it's really something.

Thank you so much for your support, and thank you to all the lovely people who contributed their amazing work to the bundle. Love you all 💚

[rathayibacter]

this is just to say!!! hi + how's it going + so excited for act 2 and also you mentioned on the page for act 1 you were going to source contributions from other writers for future acts and if that's still on the table i would love to show you some of my writing and some things i've made maybe?

hey hey! thank you so much for the love, it's been really validating seeing some of my old work blow up like that.

and yea, it definitely is and you definitely should! because of all the attention Disparateum's been heaped with, i've reached out to some folks about that again, and you should totally toss your hat into the ring!

[rathayibacter]

TTRPG WIP meme

pretty late on doing this, but hey whatcha gonna do. wips!

TTRPG Projects in some form of active development:

KATABASIS, my folkpunk afterlife dungeon crawl heartbreaker. ive got a pretty outdated edition of this out on itch, and ive been working on a pretty thorough revamp of it. im not too far out from having the whole first chunk of the game done, just gotta figure out how i wanna write out the mechanics chapter and then pretty it up a lot.

Unskilled Labor, a game about getting supernatural powers from your minimum-wage job and then fighting authoritarianism before your shift. i put out a google form asking folks for their job experience and got some *incredible* responses, ive read through nearly all of them and have definitely taken some serious inspiration already. unlike KATABASIS i dont really have the full shape of the game in my head just yet, so i cant say exactly how much ive got left, but it’s still pretty early on.

TTRPG Projects on some sort of hiatus or back-burner status:

Disparateum Act II, the second third of my weird arthouse reality-hopping adventure game. ive got the whole thing outlined and a couple chunks completely finished, but there’s still a ways to go. Disparateum’s tricky cuz it’s such an eclectic montage of weird ideas that it kinda needs to be my sole focus for anything to get done on it, but ill probably be coming back to it soon.

TTRPGS I've let go of but might return to some day:

oh god too many

like you dont even know

for every game i release i write up notes for maybe thirty

and ive released a lot of games

[rathayibacter]

🌤️🌧️☔

Share your favorite mechanic from a game you’re working on. i really like the equipment mechanic in KATABASIS. your character is a spirit in a hostile afterlife, and your equipment is made up of all your various emotional baggages from life. the stats in the game are Anger, Despair, Regret, Longing, and Suspicion, and they're derived from your equipment, so youre constantly balancing how you want to set up your stats with the unique abilities provided by each piece of equipment. do you mix gear from multiple stats so that you can offset their disadvantages and vulnerabilities, or do you go all in to make yourself devastatingly powerful but with a massive achilles heel? im real close to having a revised playtest version of KATABASIS out, so ill probably be talking a lot more about it soon.

Share something melancholy from one of your games (name the game, or let me choose). there's a small gang of animals trapped in Disparateum's Dreaming. they're too real for the world around them, and there's no clear way to free them since they're not actually asleep. they're inspired by stories of a group of feral animals, some of which were escapees from a nearby slaughterhouse, that lived in the graveyard near my home when i was growing up. hope those guys are alright.

Is there a game idea you have that you’re not sure you’ll ever write? If so, what is it? oh, too many to count. getting ideas is the easy bit for me, so i usually share em on here or on discord because id rather someone whos actually interested in making it give it a go. heres a couple i dont think ive ever shared before, though:

mech game where your mech is powered by emotions, and each emotive stat can be temporarily empowered by swapping it for a panic-response equivalent

a dungeon crawl set in an infinite series of caverns, where the four elemental affinities all have their roles swapped around (earth is healing and protective, water is cruel and deadly, fire is gentle and requires nurturing, and wind is strange and mystical)

a competitive strategy game inspired by the late Roman republic, where generals who die become senators passing laws to try and lengthen the war and balance the scales of power between the remaining generals

a game called Party Planners where you're a party of powerful max level adventurers trying to survive the cutthroat world of high society by putting on the perfect dinner party

if youre reading this, and wanna do something with one of those ideas, go fuckin nuts. just be sure to tell me about it, so i can check it out!