#i just wanna try more ttrpgs

[zincbot]

spoke too soon abt the ttrpg dog in me being smaller these days because if i don't play a game in the next 1 second i'm going to eat probability

[kirnet]

i tried a solo journaling ttrpg for the first time by playing chalice and it was super fun!!! i needed a brain break after fighting actium, and it had the perfect amount of prompting while still letting you take the lead on the creative decisions and connections. i came away from it with a surprisingly coherent and circular story given the fact that it was all randomized

[msmc-796-official]

Ooh, I got a good ask for the squad.

What's each of your favorite mechs from each manufacturer.

// Ooh - good ask! Let's see...

IPS-N: I feel I'm biased towards IPS-N since I grew up around so many of their mechs on Pyxis, but I gotta say Raleigh. Love me a good gunslinger mech; would have chose one of those over my Dusk Wing if I hadn't taken so well to sniping. (Kidd is a close second; I enjoy how much their pilots commit to the pirate theming.)

SSC: Dusk Wing. Hands down. 10/10 mech, only thing I have against it is how fragile it is. Being invisible most of the time is all well and good, but I don't think it would kill them to give it enough armor to survive more than one solid hit before dying.

HA: Eugh. Do I have to? ...fine, fuck it, Sunzi. Not because blink tech is cool (which it is, I'll admit), but because los Voladores have some serious stones on them for keeping it out of the hands of HA for so long, and even then they held onto most of their secrets.

HORUS: Hmm. Bit torn on this one, but I'll have to go with the Calendula. Dislike for the Baronies aside, their alt frames have some really nice aesthetics, and the concept of a melee-oriented Minotaur that can banish people to the ether is really fun.

my turn next! let's do this...

IPS-N: lancaster, my absolute beloved. as a mechanic myself, we love and appreciate a dedicated support mech in this house. ours will be a spring wedding (provided we find a planet where spring actually exists as a season, that is)

SSC: y'all might think I'd say mourning cloak on this one, but you'd be dead wrong. that ugly hunk o' junk is only one of many of their HORUS-wannabe frames. (besides, liches and calendulas do the whole teleportation thing so much better, PLUS they don't fucking get lost in the void for all eternity if it goes wrong.) where it's really at is the white witch. ferrofluid armor that's activated by damage AND hurts people? sign me the FUCK up

HA: easy question. tokugawa. been my mech of choice for years now, and I don't plan to change that anytime soon. decently speedy, high damage, hits harder when it's close to exploding. what more could you possibly need (well, besides a ramjet)?

HORUS: so many good choices, so little time. gotta say I'm a real fan of the kobold - we respect the Ungrateful cause in this house. real cool of the HORUS cells out there to donate such a bangin' print code entirely for free - usually you gotta bribe someone for an entirely new mech like that. it does its intended job really fucking well, plus it's out there for literally anyone to download off the Omninet for free. solid mech, no notes, definitely earned its spot on my list

> Last, but certainly not least. Hmm...

IPS-N: While I do enjoy my current Caliban, my true preference among the IPS-N frames leans more towards the Tortuga. It's a solid all-rounder that can deal and take hits with equal ferocity, and truly excels at its role as a defender.

SSC: Agility-based mechs have never been my forte, I'll admit. If I must choose from their lineup, it would be the Monarch. Missile systems have always fascinated me - I am a rather hands-on combatant, both by preference and by nature, and the idea of playing an artillery role for a change is novel to me.

HA: Given my recent interest in adding explosives to my mech's arsenal, the Iskander has caught my attention as of late. The ability to turn a battlefield into a minefield is one very few mechs capitalize on, and a few well-placed explosives can turn the tide of battle very rapidly. Plus, the ability to repel both your own and enemy explosives to protect yourself and allies is incredibly useful. (That being said, its history as an anti-guerilla minesweeper during the Orrugi Occupation is not to be ignored. It is first and foremost a tool of brutal colonization, just like every other Armory mech on the market.)

HORUS: ...I dislike HORUS mechs. Greatly. I shall choose the Gorgon out of posterity, only because its intentions are honest from the moment it enters the battlefield: protect its pilot at all costs, even if it means obliterating all that surrounds it.

-- Angel, Slisphod, & Lockbreaker

[verisimilar-entropy]

Wistfully thinks of Spellwind, I should make a headcanons up to ep 31 list its just my equivalent of like Skyrim or lotr where theres so much going on and so dense but god damn one of my favorite episodes was when two of my favorite characters became trees and the entire experience was like...they were tripping on shrooms but also one with the shrooms? Its like episode 8

and I love the dms orc captain that hates going on land and is there for the in between transportation from sea to sea land to land ferryman (not really I feel like its mostly hard to narrate and have a character at the same time) I just love captain buttocks' (yeah I'm pretty sure thats his name) humor and how him and djett ('jet') were closer in the beginning

I love ty and varsha together but I also ship smith with them as time went on, I can't tell who I want to joke as the third smith and varsha are friends to lovers, ty and varsha are irritated assholes to lovers, smith is just a jaded old fuck that loves his morons (he respects varsha a lot and thinks ty is an entertaining idiot)

Varsha and Djett are siblings they love each other like family and share different spells and potions and knowledge of interest notes

I feel like the only person really thinking too deeply about this tabletop story and wanted to drop a few lines of appreciation, I like listening to it to go to sleep since its so slow paced and gently spoken and the music and sound efx is so sweet

[22degreehalo]

Something that I kinda struggle with in extremely small RPGs is when they ask me questions right off the bat, with very little context or prompting.

'What is your alien like? How do they look?' I dunno, bud!!! I just got here!!!

[equalseleventhirds]

i have GOT to play more oneshots in more ttrpg systems. in fact i've got to run them bcos i am getting out of practice gming and i love gming and i only do it a little bit. also i love to play games. i have more games than i will ever play in my life but i love them and i wanna play them so. oneshots.

not right now obvs i am still too busy to even be online much but. maybe in january when the holidays are done and i can relax a bit. assuming i dont get sick again ofc i have been sick so much. boo.

[vexwerewolf]

The thing is, D&D is not a game.

I know that sounds insane, but hear me out: D&D is not a game, it is a games console. You don't actually "play D&D." You play "Dragon Heist" or "Tomb of Annihilation" or "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" or "your GM's homebrew campaign" or "the plot of Critical Role Season 1 reconstructed from memory" on D&D.

For quite a long while now - possibly literal decades - D&D hasn't even been the best games console, but it's been "the one everyone knows about" and "the one my friends have" and in fact it's "the one whose name is almost synonymous with the entire medium of TTRPGs," like how "Nintendo" or "Playstation" could just mean "games console" to people who didn't understand games consoles. They might not have heard of a "tabletop roleplaying game," but most people have heard of "Dungeons & Dragons."

For this extended metaphor, D&D is Nintendo back in the 90s, or Playstation in the 2000s. Sometimes you say "oh let's go to my house and play Nintendo" or "c'mon dude I wanna play Playstation" but you're not actually playing Nintendo or Playstation, you're playing Resident Evil or Super Mario Bros or Jurassic Park or Metal Gear Solid or whatever on a Nintendo or a Playstation.

Now, this metaphor is going to get even more tortured, but remember how when the PS2 and the original X-Box came out, they used a standardised DVD format, but the Nintendo console in that generation, the Gamecube, used discs but they were this proprietary tiny little disc format that they had control over? That essentially meant that it was really difficult to make third party titles for the Gamecube that did literally anything that Nintendo didn't want them to do, and also essentially gave Nintendo an even greater ability to skim money off the top of any sales?

So that must've seemed like a smart business decision in their heads. But the PS2 and the X-Box used DVDs. This was a standardized format which gave Microsoft and Sony way less control over who made games for their consoles, but that actually turned out to be a good thing for gaming, because it meant that the breadth of games that you could play on their consoles was massively increased even if some of them were games Microsoft and Sony didn't really approve of. (Also it's worth nothing that the PS2 and the X-Box could just play DVDs, which meant if your household was on a budget, you didn't need a separate DVD player - your games console could do it for you! This was actually a huge selling point!)

What Wizards are currently trying to do now is kinda-sorta the equivalent of Sony suddenly announcing that the PS5 will only accept a proprietary cartridge format they hold the patent on, will control the content of and charge money for the construction of. This possibly seems like it could be a moneymaker in your head because you hold market dominance (apparently the PS5 has 30 million units shipped compared to X-Box Series X 20 million units) and so many people make games for your console, but what it actually means is game devs and publishers will abandon your product. If it takes so much more work, the scope of what they're allowed to do is so much more limited and they're going to make less money off of it, they just won't bother. They'll go make games for the X-Box or PC instead.

To use another computer metaphor, D&D is Windows - it might not be the best system but it's the system most people are familiar with and so it gets the most stuff made for it, but there's is an upper limit on the bullshit people will take before they decide fuck it and get an Apple or learn how Linux works.

TTRPG systems are a weird product because you're not selling people a game, you're selling people a method to play a game. All the actual games are created by the community - even prewritten campaigns needs to be executed via a game master. Trying to skim money off the community will mean they'll eventually give up on you.

[rathayibacter]

Ok so how does one MAKE a tabletop game because this is something I want to try!! Are there good references out there for non-d20 systems or how to balance mechanics yourself?

oooh, hell yeah! honestly the big thing is to just do it, unlike board and video games the gap between idea and execution in ttrpgs is incredibly narrow, so if youve got an idea just start writing stuff down and see where it starts pulling you, where it feels like something's missing, find what excites you and what you feel isn't working. but that's not very specific, so let's get into it!

first off, read games! read weird games! there's tons of free ttrpgs on itch, lots of people sharing their work here and on other social media, there's 200 word rpgs here and here, and lots of system reference documents written specifically for people looking to hack games. reading other games is a great way to enrich your work whether you're building systems from scratch or working in an existing framework, because every game you read will show you a new way of approaching design problems.

on that note, draw inspiration outside of ttrpgs too! i pull a lot from video, board, and card games in my work, as well as poetry, novels, movies, etc etc etc. im autistic, and ive spent a lot of my life thinking about and dissecting unwritten social rules, so that's another big source of material for me. take your passions, whatever they may be, and put them in your work!

next up, think about the core of your game, sometimes called the minimum viable product. this is whatever the fundamental idea at the heart of your work is, and it's important to keep in mind because it keeps you from spiraling down unnecessary tangents. the core of your game can change, don't get me wrong! in fact, it likely will. what you want to do isn't prevent your work from growing and changing, but have a point of light you can always refer back to and ask "is what im doing important to this game?" you might be surprised by what you find isn't actually as important as you thought at first, and what turns out to be vital to the experience you're going for.

next up, once you start working, don't throw things away. if youre working in a word processor or google docs, it can help to have a section at the bottom of your document that you copy anything youd otherwise delete into. i do the same with my Affinity documents, ill have a few pages i dont export to store all my scraps. i know other folks who keep a dedicated scraps document that they use across projects. whatever works for you! the reason you do this is twofold: it makes it easier to cut things if you know you can always put it back later if you change your mind, and it gives you a lot of raw material that you can pull from in the future. months or years from now, you might find yourself looking to fill a gap in a new design and realize that some cool toy you set aside is exactly what you were looking for.

lastly, i wanna strongly encourage you to practice finishing things. that's often the hardest part for people, cuz we have a lot more experience starting projects than finishing them. here id like to once again direct you to 200 word rpgs, because that strict limit means you wind up with a finished first draft really quickly, and the rest of it is polishing and editing. once you've finished some bite-sized projects, you'll have a better idea of what it entails, what parts you're good at and what parts you struggle with, when to keep working and when to cut yourself off. i find it really helpful to add arbitrary limitations and deadlines on my work because that helps me push myself to finish something when otherwise i'd just keep adding and tweaking, but you'll find what works best for you!

[anim-ttrpgs]

How to Choose Music for a TTRPG Session & Eureka Song Selections

When our own group plays any TTRPG, we always like to have some amount of background music to help with the mood and tone, and if you do too, then here's a post about how best to choose it, because it is a learnable skill!

I am one of the creators of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

and the idea for this post grew out of making a curated list of songs for Eureka sessions, each sorted into different categories for easy access. The Narrator in a Eureka campaign exercises very little control over the story and pacing of the game, so it isn't very helpful to plan for a specific reveal of specific scene set to a certain song. To that end, I have sorted these songs into various types of scenes, tones, etc. for you to grab as the story is emerging.

You can find these lists here:

Session Intro Music (in case you wanna open each session with a musical theme like an episode of a tv show)

Investigation Scene Music (low-stakes) or Meal Scene

Investigation Scene Music (tense/creepy) Part 1

Investigation Scene Music (tense/creepy) Part 2

Foot Chase Music

Vehicle Chase Music

Scooby-doo-ass Chase Music

Investigators Fleeing/Hiding from Monster Music

Unarmed Combat Music

Deadly/Armed Melee Combat Music

Deadly/Firearm Combat Music

Monster Rampage Music

Monster Hunting Music (as in the monster is a PC who is hunting prey)

How to Choose Music for a TTRPG Session

There’s a few things that make a good TTRPG session song that aren’t immediately obvious.

Avoid Lyrics

Lyrics are a no-go 90% of the time. You gotta assume that the players will be trying to read rules and/or do math during the session and lyrics can make that harder.

Avoid Loud, Dissonate, or Disorienting Music

For the very same reasons—and this is especially useful to keep in mind for a horror-themed game like Eureka—it can't be too dissident or grating. A lot of horror video game music is really dissident screechy and offensive to the ears because this induces a tiny sense of panic, but again, like with lyrics, this means it’s hard to actually play a TTRPG while listening to this.

Don't Outpace the Combat

For combat music, a fast-paced “action” song can work, but if it’s too fast-paced it really quickly outpaces the combat itself because TTRPG combat is necessarily kind of slow. I do have plenty of fast-paced actiony songs in those lists, but those are best grouped into a playlist in sequence rather than looped, because then you at least have the rather frequent serendipity of the song changing on a per-turn basis.

The usual better option is something “tense” and “cool” but a bit more understated, usually with a mid-intensity repeating beat. Complex action songs work in other mediums like movies because their notes can be tailored to sync up to the actual actions on-screen, but that won’t happen in a TTRPG 90% of the time, even if just because describing a character throwing a punch takes way longer than a character throwing a punch in a movie.

For Eureka I also had to like make sure there was a good selection of action music in there that wasn’t too “cool” or “heroic.” Eureka characters are not fearless action heroes nor usually trained soldiers. If they are in a fight, it usually isnt cool, it’s scary. If anything, the combat music should be the bad guy’s theme, not the protagonists’, because they’re the ones with the advantage. When a Eureka PC does have the advantage and can be super “cool” in a fight, they’re probably a monster, in which case it’s the other way around, they’re the terrifying bad guy in the NPC’s story, and I tried to pick music to reflect that with “darker,” more “sinister” tracks.

Choose Songs without Shifts in Tempo or Intensity

You want something that is very easy to loop. Lots of cool songs go through pretty dramatic changes in their intensity over the course of their runtime. This is cool like I said when they can be synced up to action in a movie, but they’ll never (or rarely) sync up with anything in a TTRPG session. They’re going to be playing over and over on like a 3-minute loop as you roll dice and occasionally look up rules, and if this loop is really noticeable because of how the song starts out slow and then swells in intensity, that is going to be annoying fast. You want a song that has a relatively consistent level of intensity throughout its whole runtime.

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.

[a-friend-of-mara]

Hello hello

It's been a long long time since I made an intro post so time to do it again

Hello everyone, I'm Mara, I'm an 18 year old autistic trans girlie on the interwebs. I'm mostly into women but recently have been getting bi-curious, I'm poly and in a relationship with some lovely people, I am okay with you flirting but don't get upset if I don't reciprocate your feelings, my partners come first.

New: I'm pissed as fuck that I have to write this, I'm turning off asks because I got five "help my family" asks today alone...

Rant below in green

At first I was like "idk, I don't have money so I'll just delete it" now I'm sure it's bots doing the whole "help my family" garbage. I don't have a better word for it than "evil"... people are fucking suffering and some dickwads are trying to scam people out of money...... "oh but Mara how do you know its a scam" Hello there hypothetical goober who I made up for the sake of argument. I know it's a scam because the only thing I get more often than those asks are mommy doms in my dms saying "hello bitch" ... I'm not happy... I'm just not, tumblr should be for funny videos of fennec foxes, cats, queer shit, sad girl hours, and saying "mommy? Sorry" to other trans girls who I think are cute... NOT FUCKING GILT TRIPS

:(

I am a transgender woman, if you call me a sissy you're getting blocked

Stop asking where I'm from! I've heard that a hundred times and I'm tired of it!

I swear to Satan herself if one more guy is creepy in my DMs then I'm gonna start blocking all of them

Blank blogs I do not trust and will be presumed bots/scammers until proven otherwise, likes, reblogs, and a PFP take almost no time

My non-horny intests include

Computers

TTRPGs

Video games

Fixing stuff

I love talking to people and love attention even more so feel free to DM me*

*Dni list

Racists

Homophobic people

Transphobic people

TERFs

Anyone who calls me "sissy" or "tranny" or "shemale" because those are all derogatory terms and if you use them you're either an asshole or uneducated and I don't wanna take the time to figure out which

Favorite video games

(Last updated 5/13)

Titanfall 2

Team Fortress 2

Deep Rock Galactic

Beat saber

Project wingman

Cyberpunk 2077

Armored Core 6

Lethal Company

Pizza Tower

I love spreading little pockets of happiness around here sending messages saying "Heya you're loved and valid" to people on here

I frequently talk about Charlie, she's my PC, I built her with my own hands and seeing her damaged or malfunctioning hurts my soul

Ask me for money and you're being blocked instantly

Horny below the line

Dirty ask list

When giving an ask please give the question number and question, thx

I LOVE TO RP, PLEASE ASK ME ABOUT IT!

[dice-wizard]

Hello everyone looking for a new fantasy tabletop game!

You can buy Exalted Essence now.

What's Exalted you ask?

Exalted is an epic fantasy TTRPG where players play the titular Exalted - humans elevated to superhuman/demigod status - in a wild and unique setting that draws inspiration from the ancient world rather than medieval Europe. Creation (the setting) draws key inspirations from the entire world. If you're used to having to make yourself visible on your own in other fantasy, there's probably some representation in Exalted.

It has explicit queer and trans themes about finding your people, creating your own identity, and having the power to punch back at the people who hate you. This isn't incidental. The writing staff is queer as hell. You can hear me break this down more here.

Curious to learn all you can? Well you can get a detailed overview of the entire game on the podcast Systematic Understanding of Everything hosted by myself, @presidentofbirds and @phillycuriosity

If I'm used to D&D 5e why should I pick this up?

Well, I presume if you're reading this post you're already interested in trying something new, so:

The entire game in one book. Exalted: Essence is self contained, character types, equipment, enemies and all!

An exciting style of fantasy that's different than classic D&D but like, textually gay, and very easy to have scenes like ballroom fights, epic galas, and touching homoerotic healing scenes - no house rules required.

But also, tactical depth and combat you can really sink your teeth into if fighting monsters and villains is your bag.

An excuse to use all your d10s at once

Character building and advancement mechanics designed to be familiar to a 5e audience. Characters "level up" based on story beats, and have Advantages, which are functionally similar to class and race features.

A world welcoming to most heroic archetypes, so it's easy to convert your favorite OC.

Extremely kissable dragons, demons, gods, elementals, ghosts, faeries, and unnamed ancient horrors

I'm a fan of a previous edition, what's Essence got for me?

Design focused on alleviating some of the previous versions' missteps

Virtues are back, baby

2e fans will find it an improvement from second edition's mechanical strengths - it's pretty easy to convert all your favorite 2e Charms to XS.

Streamlined versions of familiar rules to make it painless to introduce new friends to the game we love.

The Cliff's notes on Ex3's new Exalt types.

Did I mention it's all of Exalted in one book?

How does it play?

d10 dice pool looking for 7,8,9 as successes. 10s count as two successes, which can lead to explosive, heroic outcomes

Combat system designed to keep all players engaged the entire time - even characters who aren't focused on fighting at all.

Combat also narrows the gap between experienced and new players and players who want to win at RPGs and players who just wanna vibe so GMs aren't tearing their hair out trying to balance encounters.

Social system designed to resolve in a single roll so you can be immersed in role play and not interrupt it with constant rolling - without sacrificing a variety of social approaches

"Ventures" system for characters working on long term projects from traveling across the world to crafting magical wonders to building communities without forcing this to be "downtime" activity

Characters have access to Charms - exception-based special powers that make them extremely good at whatever they focus on.

It's easily my favorite game (and the project I developed that I'm the proudest of), so I'm excited for everyone to try it out.

[psychhound]

psychhound games 2 year anniversary

wow ... i cant believe its already been two years since i started publishing games on itch but so much has happened in that time. i got promoted at my job, quit that job, started a master's program, became a teacher, decided to continue on to a phd, got published (twice), found meds that helped, made a lot of new friends, learned to cook, played in a good number of campaigns and short shots, and somehow, through all of that, i managed to publish (checks notes) 24 games, 2 zines, and an srd

in that time ive gotten over 20k views and almost 5000 downloads, as well as shout outs in video essays and podcasts. i've run two successful kickstarters and one that made it a far way but ended up teaching me more from its failure than i wouldve hoped

my goal when i started making ttrpgs was just to get a little bit of practice before i made my Big Dream Game. get my feet wet a little to learn the ropes and then design what i had actually set out to do in the first place - make a game designed specifically for therapeutic practice. and then i realized that i actually just really enjoy making games and kept making more and more and more of them until ... here we are

the first ttrpg i ever made literally came to me in a dream. my little sister was working for his college paper at the time and i dreamt that when he came to visit we played a silly comedy interviewing game i had made for her. so i woke up and made it. and then she visited and we played and it was a lot of fun!! and i was like. oh wait i can make games to make very specific people happy ... baller. so i kept doing that. made a game for my best friend where they could play as their cat and cause mischief and playing it for their birthday is such a cherished memory. my by far best selling game was made for a dear friend who's a photographer and lives in a big city and i wanted to blend city exploration, photography, and his love of a well-designed tarot deck into something fun he could do when he got out of the house. my most recent game was made because i wanted a tiny game i could print and send with my friends' holiday cards, and i know how much we all love writing and making crazy blorbo playlists so i made a playlist-driven writing game

over these two years its just become more and more obvious to me that my creativity that was once fueled so wholly by grief and trying to process it has now flipped around to being powered by joy and just overwhelming love. so many people in my life now who i love so wholeheartedly i found or got close to through playing ttrpgs, or being in the ttrpg community, and channeling that energy and that joy into making more of them to put out into the world has made my life so much better a million times over. i dont know where the future will take me but i hope to have such a long career of this - making through joy, engaging through play, growing through community - and i cant thank everyone whos supported me in getting here enough. im feeling very touched and very overwhelmed but just know that if youve ever bought one of my games, posted about playing it, left a nice review, or recommended it to a friend, you have my whole heart and i hope you have such a sweet new year

if you wanna check out my games you can find them on psychhound on itch or check out my portfolio and such on my website :) thanks everyone. happy new year

[asphy7]

Meeting up with a new ttrpg group tommorrow. Hopefully we all get along and work well together.

It will also be my first dive into pathfinder 2e. So I redrew Malik and Kyros as options.

Malik would be an enigma bard and Kyros would be an angelic sorcerer. However I am trying two more designs as I don’t wanna hold myself too hard on playing the characters I’m already attached too. This was just for fun but if I get a whole new blorbo I’ll be happy too.

Also forgive me for Malik’s back leg. I found out WAAAY too late and I’m pissed.

[anouchard]

Malevolent Liveblog: Episode 15.

Spoilers beneath the cu(l)t:

Beautiful piano.

OH CHRIST I FORGOT IT'S THIS BIT

NONONONO

How did I forget this happens here. This opening was TRAUMATIC.

Phenomenal acting from Harlan though.

Note to John: Arthur is very much not OK.

Asking some VERY interesting questions here, buddy.

Still wanna know if Anna links in more.

A Web, you say?

Oooooh, Vanguard lore.

"I'm not doing it for you ... but you're welcome." The audacity of this man.

Mountains of Madness? Mountains of Madness tonite, King??

"Like the base of a mountain" yooooooo

Arthur Lester has the purest (and rarest) laugh.

Hey Alexa, play Darude: Sandstorm

uh oh

May prove ultimately fatal? Damn.

Who's to say it will hold our weight? Hmmmm

"long and limbless" serpent? Serpent? Giant draconic serpent? Yesssssss

ELECTRICAL giant draconic serpent!

Playing with lightning here, boys.

Lads don't kill, just leave.

I can't believe they used a metal pole to try and kill an electrical beastie. Besties why.

"That was not a well-thought-out plan". Well, it is you, Artie (/hj).

NEVER just call it dead.

But also noooo

"Thank you"

I'm guessing that one is for John, huh?

"... the front of the boat"

"The bow."

"Right."

... cute.

Shaving kit! Arthur is about to be ✨️dapper✨️.

Why *IS* there a boat in the Dreamlands?

You don't know what a bow is but you can identify the Captain's Quarters, buddy?

Ohhh. Was the King here? Leading people, leaving traces? That would make sense.

Frank's (?) notes are like my funky shorthand.

Never realised how like a TTRPG this is written. John sounds like such a GM. Love it.

OH, of COURSE John would be feeling the sand in the eye. Poor kid.

I like this being almost a reverse sea adventure.

Boat? Check

Cliffs? Check

Storm? Check.

"So we're at sea?"

"Nah, desert."

"... what."

Hilarious.

Poor creature :(

"It's already so hot" MOOD, BUDDY.

"You can make me whole agaiiiii-" no, wait, we don't want that.

Well, that escalated quickly.

OH, so if Artie dies, John takes over?

I mean ... huh.

METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING

Harlan Guthrie your phrasing is so eloquent. Superb. Great job.

Arthur getting his steps in. 🚶‍♂️

To the right, trace the wall now y'all.

Well this sounds lovely.

Arthur thinks the same.

It is genuinely cool though.

MOSS MOSS MOSS MOSS

THE MOSS SPEAKS

SENTIENT, WHISPERING MOSS

Maybe not the time to interrogate the meaning of fear, but eh.

What is it with arboreal and botanical entities this season, folks?

The moss continues to speak. This is VERY cool.

Oooooooh ...

Aaaaaaaand SCENE.

[titanrpg]

How to keep making ttrpgs? I just made my first one+ a couple game jam entries and i feel like i hit a rock , all i have is a vague idea, what do i do?

aw well i'm so happy you made a bunch of games and want to keep making them!

there are multiple answers to this, but mine is: take a break! i had on-and-off ttrpg burnout last year, and forcing it never helps. so i used that burnout time to get into a new hobby i've been meaning to try for forever: fighting games! now i go back and forth between writing my games and getting better at guilty gear! i'm even trying to learn a new type of controller?? it's real fun. on top of that, seeing other types of game formats is a great way to get new ideas!

and some days i just chill with my partner and my pet reptiles. REST is so important. not as a way to work more in the future, but just for its own sake.

the ttrpg design flow will be back soon enough. after HEXFALL and Caltrop Core, i was like 'idk what other kind of games i wanna make. have i done everything i can do here?' but sure enough, i got the idea for EMERGE8, an entirely new SRD, then got the idea for TANK!, Decadent Salvo, and more.

tl;dr don't force it. take a break and your brain will be itching to give you fresh new ideas soon enough!

[wtf-is-sleep-even]

MODERN/DND AU

(short thing i wanted to write cause you guys seem to like AU's more than i thought. Human AU, they play DND* *quick note i dont really know exactly how DND or TTRPG's work but i know theres a storyline mechanic and im using that to my advantage)

It really was an accident, truly. Jedediah didnt even know what DND was up until half a year ago, one of his best friends teenaged kid, Nicky, had picked up a kick for table top rpg's, Jed thought it was stupid at first but tagged along just to be sure there was enough players, he did care for the kid, he was like his nephew, he just didnt expect how much fun it would be. An hour and a half in and he was bored out of his mind, another hour in he was coughing up his lungs he was laughing so much! it was nice to spend time with his friends like this, and it made the kid happy, so he kept going.

it's just make-believe, a game of pretend, but the feelings he felt were real, anxious at the next battle, frustrated at the confusing (but clever) puzzles, the surprise and humor at a funny encounter, the second hand embarrassment for when one of his friend's characters made a fool of themself, and, the love. Jed knew that he felt something different for Octavius, at first he thought he hated the guy, but day after day it was made known that he actually loved him.

and of course, he had to be in the same DND group as him, classic, whats even funnier is that in-game, their characters are married, something about appeasing a court in the faewild, it didnt matter much because just a few weeks after that, Octavius asked him out on a date. They've been a couple ever since. But the group doesnt know that, they've made jokes here and there but it never crossed any lines, Jedediah didnt tell anyone out of fear first, Octavius didnt tell anyone because nobody asked much, he told people casually and it wasnt much of a problem after, so they never told the group.

Jed wasnt afraid anymore, so why not take a chance?

it was one of the calmer sessions in the games, still walking carefully in case of any curses that reside in the lands. "Its an awfully inviting clearing, the trees shift and stir, the birds chirp and sing, a foggy mist settles over the sides dimming the lights to reveal fireflies dancing in the air, but hiding any way of escape, what do you do?" Nicky narrates, hes gotten so much better at it, instead of the stumbly, stuttering sections of small text and strained, hidden voices of characters he was trying to play, he was bold and steady, the picture flowing seamlessly into the next "can i look to see if there are any traps or illusions?" Ahkmenrah asks, one of Jed and Larry's best friends from highschool, both of them were happy to see him again

"roll a perception check, add a disadvantage because of the fog" Ahk rolls his D-20 "uh, 17" Nicky nods, looking over to gloss over the page of his notebook "you spot a beartrap at the side of a fallen tree, its clapped around one of its branches, reaching out to touch the outside of the clearing, it seems that its real, but it doesnt feel like wood, it feels like a stone pillar, the area isnt an illusion, but not everything is right" they nod, one of them in the group, a guy named Lance that Ahk dragged along (who Jed totally didnt wanna punch because Octavius remarked on his eyes, no way) advanced forward and saw a shallow grave in the dirt, they all came to see it

"is there anything at the bottom?" Oct asked, Nicky smiled, bad sign "there is! a small wooden chest, there isnt any locks on it, it seems you can just open it like you would with any other box" Octavius hummed, Jed tried to ignore how the sound gave him butterflies "i take the box!" lance announced, Nicky describes how he takes it, opening it up to reveal a bottle with a note in it and a sharp dagger, obsidian blade with a willow wood handle, Octavius opted to inspect the dagger for any inscriptions or engravings

"you take the dagger in your hands, it feels heavier than any steel or even obsidian that you've ever held, in the handle it reads "with love, My dagger" everyone was confused, another puzzle, woo boy. Ahk tried to figure it out but just got nowhere, Octavius asked if there was anywhere you could put a dagger, "the stone alter shines slightly, there seemed to be a slot in it, but the air around it seemed that whoever did this, would pay a price" Octavius debated for a second before saying to insert the dagger, his character was met with a faewild curse

"you fall over, completely unconscious before you even hit the ground, a faewild curse passes over you, you shall be alseep for until you find a kiss of true and pure love, y'know like that one disney princess, sleeping beauty or snow white, i cant remember, but yeah" the group chuckles while Octavius states that this couldnt have ended worse, suddenly Lance pipes up "arent Gaius and Smith married? would Smith be able to wake him up or no?" Nicky passes Jed a D-20 "roll"

Jedediah rolled "12" Nicky laughed "alright yeah, Smith kneels down to check whats wrong, feeling the compelling urge to kiss Gaius, he gives him a kiss on the lips and suddenly Gaius's eyes flicker open, hes awake but has a disadvantage on all persuasion and strength rolls" the two others laugh, not thinking that would actually work when Jed smirked, the fun of DND was mostly that they got to act out what the characters do, right? he shrugged "alright"

Jedediah grabbed Octavius's face, pulling him in for a kiss, Octavius was shocked by the sudden affection but melted into it quickly, closing his eyes and pulling the other by the collar of his shirt. The table went into absolute chaos, they didnt expect THIS, Octavius pulled away with a smile, Jed chased his lips, connecting them again for another kiss "ALRIGHT BREAK IT UP BREAK IT UP!!" Ahkmenrah and Nicky yelled.

yeah, Jedediah likes DND nights