#fantasy rpg characters

[eliotbaum]

The Hunter / The Prowler / The Occultist / The Champion

4 character classes from The Hidden Isle.

Kickstarter ends in less than two weeks!

[bleakbarrows]

Sentinel of The Depths

[ordheist]

been bogged down in some older commissions, but I have a lot to show for it

[probablybadrpgideas]

Good wizard who, due to a mixup when applying for their courses, only learnt evil spells.

"Ok, I know we need to save the town, but all I know is Disintegrate Baby, Ray Of Misgendering and Mordenkainen's Needlessly Painful Death. So what strategy are we going for?"

[prokopetz]

On the origin of oozes:

When googling it seems that ooze type enemies came about with dnd.

Are you aware of earlier origins? It does not seem farfetched to assume that some fantasy book had them before that.

(also, best ooze in your opinion?)

It's broadly correct that the ooze monster in its modern form comes to us via Dungeons & Dragons (with considerable influence from D&D-inspired Japanese console RPGs like Dragon Quest). However, like many other classic D&D tropes, its antecedents were present in the sword and sorcery literature of the 20th Century – ooze monsters just seem like they sprung into existence fully formed in D&D's monster manuals because nobody reads sword and sorcery lit anymore.

While there are no doubt earlier precedents, I'd be inclined to point to early 20th Century cosmic horror fiction as the point where the modern giant-amoeba-like notion of the ooze monster really became a standard trope. We can see a clear prototype of the modern ooze monster in Lovecraft's shoggoths, first described in detail in At the Mountains of Madness (1931), for example; from there, the line to the sword and sorcery literature that would go on to form the basis of Dungeons & Dragons is a short one. This certainly isn't the first example of the type – I just don't have an earlier one at my fingertips.

As for my favourite ooze monster, I've gotta give it to the gelatinous cube, one of the few examples of the type which truly is original to Dungeons & Dragons – in fact, it could only have come from D&D, owing to the peculiarities of its creation. It started out as a sort of dungeon hazard, an "invisible" ooze which concealed itself by being completely transparent and conforming perfectly to the shape of any passage that it occupied; however, since old-school D&D expected players to produce their own dungeon maps as they went, and made their job easier by abstracting dungeon floorplans onto a grid of ten-foot squares, the idea of the gelatinous cube quickly shifted from "ooze which perfectly fills any passage it occupies" to "ooze which evolved to be a perfect ten-foot cube in order to block a standard ten-foot-by-ten-foot dungeon hallway". It's incredibly dumb, and I love it.

[gudgurkan]

Back from the hunt

Progress pics:

[gothicspork]

Luckily, there are ethically-sourced corpses across town.

[dealunart]

Cultures of Roshar for the Stormlight RPG (aka Cosmere RPG) by Brotherwise Games (Link to the kickstarter here)

ADs: Johnny O'Neal and Katie Payne

I haven't had much to post on socials lately so I haven't been very active but now I can finally show some of the things I've been up to, starting with this! Can't believe it's already been a whole year since I painted these.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy by A.N.I.M.

Allow us to introduce ourselves, we are The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery, or “A.N.I.M.”, a very small TTRPG studio based out of the southern U.S. but ultimately made up of people from many different walks of life.

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is a neo-noir investigation-focused RPG with (as you can probably guess from the title) a supernatural twist, that is currently in production after an extremely successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.

How far would you go to learn the truth?

Play amateur detectives caught up in things they barely understand, and explore how the lives of your characters unravel as they push themselves to dig deeper into the unknown!

Eureka innovates on and revolutionizes investigative gameplay, TTRPG combat, and what it means to play as a monster as a character in a TTRPG, filling several voids we have noticed in the TTRPG space. Eureka supports investigation to a degree never before seen, ensuring that searching for clues is a granular and player-driven process, but also ensuring that the whole story doesn’t grind to a halt after one single failed investigation check.

Character-driven gameplay!

Stats and abilities are based on who your character is as a person. Freeform character creation allows you to build a totally unique little guy, and have a totally unique gameplay experience with him! This is supported by the backbone of the Composure mechanic. Stress, fear, fatigue, and hunger will wear your investigators down as they trudge deeper into the unknown. Food, sleep, and connections with their fellow investigators are the only way to keep them going!

Secrets inside and out! 

Any investigator could be a monster, helping their friends while trying not to reveal their true natures. The party will learn to trust and rely on each other, or explode into a tangled net of drama!

Though most PCs will be mundane humans—or perhaps because most PCs will be mundane humans—Eureka also supports playing monstrous PCs, such as a vampire, in a way never seen before. This isn’t just a watered-down stat bonus, it’s like playing an almost entirely different game, with all the monster’s strengths and weaknesses to account for while solving the mystery, plus the added incentive to keep it a secret from the other PCs as well as their players.

(You can also play as something like The Thing from John Carpenter's The Thing!)

If you like or are interested in Call of Cthulhu, Monster of the Week, Dresden Files, X-Files, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Apocalypse Keys, World of Darkness, or Gumshoe, you’ll probably find something in Eureka to really enjoy.

Intense, tactical combat! 

Hits are devastating, and misses are unpredictable–firing a gun will always change the situation somehow, for better or for worse!

Now in Technicolor!

Evocative artwork from talented femme-fatales @chaospyromancy and @qsycomplainsalot and the mysterious @theblackwarden paint a gorgeously-realized portrait of a world with shadows lurking in every corner.

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but you can still check out the public beta on itch.io to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, etc.!

You can also follow updates on our Kickstarter page where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more, you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy earlier, plus extra content such as adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[stonedrunkwizard]

[eliotbaum]

Cover for the upcoming TTRPG, The Hidden Isle! art by me and @vivtanner.

Embark on a Tarot adventure! Wield magic and fight tyranny across the Renaissance world in this TTRPG powered by card divination. Sign up to get notified of its Kickstarter launch, coming in the fall of 2023.

[bleakbarrows]

Rusted Marauder

[ordheist]

tech priest commission

[probablybadrpgideas]

Paladin with a firm oath against killing but keeps bringing it up in really weird contexts.

"Thank you for the christmas sweater! Just to remind you, I do have a vow against killing you over it. What, no, I love the sweater! I just wanted you to know it would violate my oath to kill you over it!"

[gewska]

Warrior

Unwillingly became a knight and groups' leader, listens to everybody's problems but bottles up her own

More about my projects on my Patreon 🌸

[octobelus]

hey if you want to solve mysteries as a genius detective, bumbling idiot, super powerful predator, deeply traumatized weirdo, Normal Guy, or some combination of the above, check out the ttrpg Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

development is ongoing, but in its current state my character got to trigger a cascade of dramatic reveals and worsening mental health among the party where it turned out 3/5 of them were living dolls while a dead body lay at their feet and the only human was covered in its brains. I haven't played ttrpgs in yearsss and this was a hilarious way to come back to it!