#eureka ttrpg

[anim-ttrpgs]

"My Glasses!" Trait from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. Every investigator has 3-6 Traits!

My Glasses! || This investigator’s superb investigation skills are offset by the fact that they are completely helpless without their glasses, which always seem to get knocked away somehow. Add a +1 Contextual bonus to all Investigative Rolls with Knowledge Skills. However, if any offensive roll is made against them, and at least one of the dice on this roll shows a 6,[1] this investigator’s glasses are knocked off, regardless of the outcome of the roll. If they get a Partial Success or Failure on an Athletics or Close Combat roll, their glasses are also knocked off if either of the dice show a 6. As long as their glasses are off, they have a -3 penalty to all Skill rolls, but a +2 Contextual bonus to Composure rolls. To find their glasses after losing them, they must make a Full Success on a Senses roll. Searching for their glasses takes 1 action in any turn-based situation. Another character that can see may also find and retrieve the glasses without having to make a roll. 

[1   off to the side in the final formatting] To be perfectly clear, this is not about a +6 modifier, or a cumulative 6 made by adding things up. If you roll the dice and see a 6 on the physical dice, that is when the glasses are knocked off. This also applies if the roll uses a D12, still look for a 6. 

[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.

[umbraldame]

Ask and you shall recieve, Eureka cat girls are here! You can find them in the april fools release here

You should also consider downloading Euerka Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook here

And supporting my friends in ANIM on Patreon

[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!

[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!

[paladin-official]

Ok so, a while back I and a bunch of pals at the @anim-ttrpgs public discord server sat down to make random investigator builds out of a set of randomly rolled traits from the official trait list. I decided that some of those are too good to not be shared, so here is a list of a few of the builds I made, some of which are randomly rolled and some intentionally built. A list of traits can be found here (though I really recommend just buying the game and checking the traits section, it's not expensive and I promise it's worth the price!)

Death Wish, Rumbler, Push It, Not Finished Yet, Ask Questions Later, Nobody's Fool

I call this build "The Kiryu". This investigator is wholly built for combat and is a serious menace in a fight, but Eureka isn't about fighting good, it's about solving mysteries. Due to having 6 traits, this investigator will actually struggle to obtain the much coveted Eureka! points and solve mysteries as quickly as their peers, but should the group get into a difficult fight, they'd certainly want this investigator by their side.

Talking Dog, Real Capybara Hours, Empathetic

Completely ordinary Golden Retriever.

Talking Dog, Rumbler, Nobody's Fool

Completely ordinary Chihuahua.

Talking Dog, Showboater, Renaissance Man

This one is just Air Bud.

Talking Dog, Wolfman, Werewolf (mage trait)

Sir, that is too much dog per dog. Put some back.

Gorgon, Just Built Different, Wicked, Rumbler

This is my character, Sarah! She's a wretched woman who copes with the trauma of turning into a giant man-eating snake monster by becoming the worst person you've ever met. She works as a pro wrestler and hides her monstrous nature in plain sight by being comically upfront with her serpentine traits. She is also the leading cause for people going missing in her city, directly responsible to at least one disappearance every two weeks.

Living Doll, Fueled By Obsession, Not Done Yet

OMG, it's Elster Signalis...

Gorgon, Kleptomaniac, Technically...

Suspiciously object shaped woman very good at hiding the true locations of said object

Final Girl, Death Wish, Not Done Yet

This investigator loves heroic last stands

And my favourite:

Gorgon, Just Built Different, Wicked, Lover, Femme Fatale, That's No Way To Feel

I think I hauve couvid...

If you enjoyed any of these, feel free to follow @anim-ttrpgs here on tumblr for frequent Eureka! updates and posts, and don't forget to grab your own copy from the game via the official itch.io page or the patreon!

[gatlingant]

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.

[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?

[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

[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.

[bad-eureka-updates]

i hear in the next update they are removing men

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

[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.

[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!