#eureka ttrpg

[anim-ttrpgs]

Roughly transcribing something one of our other team members (@ashweather) talked about when we were in a call working on editing Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy together:

"One more thing that makes Eureka mundane is the work it does in between the lines, its refusal to narrow down 'mechanics' to just the modifiers and the numbers on the dice. For one example, let's take disabled investigators - in numerical terms, it's purely a detriment, but there is a concrete benefit to disabled investigators: they necessarily have a different perspective and a different approach than their able-bodied allies. In the course of needing accommodation, they will notice things or reveal things about the locations or NPCs they interact with that an able-bodied character may not have. For instance, if they need a wheelchair ramp, they'll notice if a building doesn't have one, and that may be a clue that the building is not up to code. Since Eureka is so invested in building an environment where those kinds of details really, concretely matter to an investigation, this difference in perspectives provides not only an artistic benefit but also a benefit that matters in such objective, quantifiable terms that I can't call it anything but 'mechanical.'"

[forlorn-plushie]

Styles of Prep - Games that Care

Yet another of the lies that Wizards of the Coast has sold TTRPG players, which they've bought into wholeheartedly, is that there are different styles of preparation, and all are valid for every game (because both are valid for D&D, and D&D is right for every game, of course.)

I'm gonna go over a couple games I've run, and explain that actually they all care about the type and level of preparation the GM does.

Indie games are often honest and open about what they want. To take a high-prep example, I recently ran Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. It is not subtle! In the narrator section, right after the introduction, it says "We cannot advise you strongly enough to use prewritten adventure modules". It's not just there - throughout the rules, there's an emphasis that the situation, the state of the world at the outset and thus at every time that follows, is known and rigid. Eureka is a mystery game - the who, what, how, why, and more are all set in stone. The narrator is forbidden to change the scenario on the fly.

Eureka is very forceful of this because the authors, writing a game for mystery investigations, are well aware that it's damn near impossible to make a coherent mystery up on the fly. I'm sure they've tried. I've tried. It's impossible. Something will contradict, and you won't notice until well after the players have reasoned from that contradictory information. It can be done, but not well, and the mental load on the GM is going to kill them.

It's not a genre thing - Eureka is a game about the act of solving mysteries, but so in Brindlewood Bay. I don't have experience with Brindlewood Bay myself, but I do know that the GM doensn't have a real mystery ahead of time - there's a move which is rolled to determine whether a theory is correct. Both are mystery games, but they approach them differently - and each makes a vastly different demand of the GM's preparations.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Eureka, more in line with Brindlewood Bay in fact, is just about every Powered by the Apocalypse game. Apocalypse World is very clear about what to prepare, and it's more or less the opposite of Eureka: "Daydream some apocalyptic imagery, but DO NOT commit yourself to any storyline or particular characters."

The rules actually tell you to start on what would typically be 'prep' during the first session: "Work on your threat map and essential threats". It's more like note-taking, at that point, just placing the names of stuff that gets mentioned in the session. After that first session, and between each other, you do some real out-of-session work, solidifying the notes you made into Threats.

I won't go into it at length, but Dungeon World is much the same - though there's no 'map' for threats, as characters are expected to be far more mobile, the system of solidifying problems that were mentioned in-game into problems with some mechanically attached descriptors is much the same.

Now, on to the elephant-sized dragon in the room - Dungeons and Dragons. The game itself is, truthfully, quite honest about this. It's the marketing team and the community, having fallen for their propaganda, who pretend low-prep is a valid way to play Dungeons and Dragons.

The 2014 DMG, correctly, focuses on prepared play. It asks DMs to consider "Do you like to plan thoroughly in advance, or do you prefer improvising on the spot?", but everything in that book is either rules text or preparation guides. Mostly the latter.

D&D, as it has existed since 3rd edition, (this is what I have experience with - I can't speak to earlier editions, except to note that there are alot of modules in their time and in the OSR tradition) is a game that thrives on prep. Even if that prep is procedural - tables of encounters and wandering monsters for an area, for example - it's impossible to run the game from nothing, without a lot of background, and have it work.

Imagine not knowing D&D, at all - you pick it up, read the non-list rules (so skipping most of the classes, races, spells, feats, backgrounds, weapons, etc) in the PHB and DMG, and try to run a game entirely improv from the rules and vibes. You'd quickly end up scouring the monster manual for appropriate encounters - and the game, by the rules, demands appropriate encounters! There's a budget system! It's a game about killing monsters and does a lot of math to try and make sure it's challenging without killing player characters.

D&D, at least in the books, is pretty honest about what it wants from preparation. It wants a lot! The playerbase pretends otherwise, but they're wrong. I've yet to find another game that tries to lie like this. Eureka wants you to use modules. Apocalypse World wants you to wing it. I have yet to find any game that actually doesn't care.

[saucy-egg-merchant]

"The Bureau's finest" - well, not anymore!

Recently got into @anim-ttrpgs' Eureka! TTRPG and I'm enamored by the unique game mechanics and creatures, especially the TFBs and just couldn't resist making a little guy to play.

Excerpt from his file:

"A disgraced FBI agent, twice suspended in the past five years, working hard to restore his career and reputation. He's lost the faith of the bureau and his teammates, and his job is on thin ice should he fail to resolve his latest assignment. Several former friends and co-workers have stated on record that Saul has been 'off his game' and behaving erratically ever since he returned from a botched assignment, the exact details surrounding which are still unclear."

Long story short, Agent Sharpe ran into the woods chasing down a suspect and came back very, very wrong. After the incident his partner transferred to a different department, cut ties with him, and became obsessed with UFOs for definitely unrelated reasons.

But really just he's a normal guy who works hard and loves gossip. All he does every day is go to work, yap at his coworkers, bust ass on wild goose chases, eat his body weight in food, and watch movies all night. His unfurled shape is circular, ~6ft in diameter, and looks like a pancake!

As per the rules, he has very little support from the bureau and even fewer allies in law enforcement. He's basically been cut off from all the FBI's resources and they're just waiting for him to quit on his own.

[corviacore]

Finally got to try out Eureka combat properly and the group I was playing with all had pretty much the same response to it: "oh my god this is so much better than DND, this is actually fun and engaging!"

Of course Combat isn't the *focus* of Eureka, but it's so well designed that, when it does happen, its so much fun to actually do, it's no replacement for a system that's combat focused, I don't think that would work, but that's kinda the point, the combat feels rooted in the system and flows very well with the rest of the game and actually feels like it makes sense the way stuff happens, big fan!

[ghoulfield]

i got to play Eureka: investigative urban fantasy for the first time the other week (i meant to post this the day after playing and it ended up in drafts oops) and it was absolutely amazing! Investigation Points make searching for clues a joy whether you succeed or fail, and there are so many great mechanics (Tiers of Fear, Truth, Composure, etc) that encourage roleplay in such a brilliant way. i really cannot thank @anim-ttrpgs enough for making such an innovative ttrpg, and i can't recommend it enough! the free beta is on itch.io! go check it out now!

[yoshicolonoscopyfootageofficial]

Just realized that eureka ttrpg could possibly be used to run a fallen london-style campaign pretty well, considering a lot of the appeal of fallen london is the mysteries surrounding the setting. There’d probably have to be some custom rules to hack it, mostly stuff around the impermanence of death. Also when composure hits zero investigators are checked into the royal bethlehem.

Might also do with a custom set of supernatural character options, though the secrecy element would also be less stated, since the setting deviates from Eureka’s assumption of supernatural beings being very uncommon. Generally that stuff would have to be hacked a good bit. This’d also lose that poignant disability metaphor most likely… maybe some of this would be better suited as traits or something…

I’m mostly spitballing here, especially since I know failbetter is planning to cook up their own system soonish

Also I’m still working my way through the eureka book itself so I’m probably working with some spotty info on the system itself

Eh, I’m still having fun thinking things up, and the candle finder society stories got me in the mood (the murdered puppet case was pretty linear mechanically but I could see an interesting module built out of it’s core)

[chaoticblade5]

I really want to know why hate crimes are a required part of the Eureka ttrpg. Also, why are the homeless people treated as the same level of inconvenience as a pile of shit? It seems like a really mean-spirited game for how much I have seen people raving about how respectful and nice it is compared to other investigation games.

[tinytablepodcast]

And sometimes it's kind of both at the same time #Foriva ....

being a GM is really fun because sometimes you can make your players go through some really traumatic Evangelion bullshit, but other times you can force them to go bowling for no reason

[anim-ttrpgs]

One complaint/reaction we often get about Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy that I find really baffling is that we expect you to hide your PC's character sheet from other players at the table. A lot of people act like this is an impossible task, but, like tons and tons and tons of well-established tabletop games expect you to hide elements of play from other players? Poker? Blackjack? Go Fish? Uno? Settlers of Catan? DM screens?

[corviacore]

Been thinking again about GMing and why I dislike it and why I dislike DnD nowadays, honestly half of it isn't even DnDs fault but how players want to interact with it, like I made a whole homebrew world, but did any of my players ask anything about it? Or ask where they could be from? What the local culture is like?

Naw just made characters and expected me to make em fit the world! They didn't even make em fit together as a team properly, and one player wanted me to come up with a whole new tribe of peoples for him to play, wich, ironically worked out the best of all of them because they happened to fit the theme of the campaign well.

This together with the last 2 games I played in being chaotic and undirected because players keep wanting to do random shit makes me just not want to play this stuff anymore.

Like if you want to build a crime empire while we are trying to save the world, fuck off! DnD doesn't support building a crime empire without the GM devoting significant effort to it!

And I'm tired of players expecting such work from GMs, I think that's why I'm so burnt out on DnD and why pathfinder won't help, because people expect it to be a sandbox, but it isn't a sandbox, they can't just do what they want without consequence, the consequence is the GM having a shit time!

So I just want to play narrower games that have specific things they want to do, like blades, or Eureka, because then the players go in with the expectation of what's going to happen and by god do I need them to actually understand what a game is about or I will explode.

This is 100% why I'm so happy about Eureka lately and had so much fun playing it, as any Ttrpg should it leaves you many options for what to do and I never felt "railroaded" or whatever, but still followed a cohesive line throughout the module we played and it was fun! Players focusing on the point of the TTRPG is fun!

Imagine if someone started playing a criminal who had 0 interest in investigating anything and asked the narrator to make up a system to start a criminal enterprise in a Eureka module, that person would be insane right? That's stupid! But somehow in DND they think that's ok, no matter what the DM had planned. :/

[faeriedaez]

Introducing: Urethra! Bad Traits for Bad Investigators

Available now on Itch, I have created a Pay-If-You-Must collection of 14 new traits for the HIT independently developed, critically acclaimed, urban fantasy noir mystery solving tabletop roleplaying game known only as Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. The traits held within range from actively hindering, laughably specific, and even decently powerful (albeit with humorous presentation.) If you're a fan of Eureka, please help yourself to my little supplement, I guarantee it will at least bring you a chuckle. If you AREN'T already a fan of Eureka and you're seeing this post I BEG you, click the underlined link above or even right here. Believe me when I tell you Eureka is the TTRPG scene's next indie darling. Alright. PEACE.

[professordetective]

For those curious:

@anim-ttrpgs

https://anim-ttrpg.itch.io/

@qsycomplainsalot (one of the artists, who I've been following for years.)

I do enjoy that EUREKA: Investigative Urban Fantasy has a skill on its character sheet that's literally named ██████████, whose description basically just says "you're not allowed to know what this skill is called or what it does, but putting points in it will benefit the kind of person who would put points into a skill whose name they're not allowed to know", and it's actually telling the truth.

[bad-eureka-updates]

i hear in the next update they are removing men

You say removing men, I say creating a lot more women.

[chaospyromancy]

The plight of being a woman walking back to your car at night is that they won't even let you start eating your burger before bothering you. Who's they? Why the wolfmen. Of course.

This is a modern AU of Gen for @anim-ttrpgs's Eureka!

[archpaladin]

Especially when the supernatural investigators are themselves weirdoes (potentially in ways completely unrelated to their alleged supernatural nature)! 😏

Love playing Eureka because there's a very important metagame of "are the other players' investigators supernatural or are they just weirdoes?"

[jaymerge855]

a game of Eureka is likely to leave you:

- a distaste for cops

- a newfound reverence for healthy habits like sleeping and eating well

- an awareness of how close anyone is at any moment from suffering disabling injuries

- a respect for the humble seatbelt

- more distaste for cops

- perhaps some newfound feelings towards the monstrous