#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

[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.

[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!

[thydungeongal]

Are there any horror ttrpgs you’d reccomend? I’m fairly new in ttrpgs, and I wanna try out some stuff that isn’t just pathfinder or d&d and horror has been calling me

I wouldn't recommend horror RPGs because they're scary

But serious answer: I haven't played a lot of straight horror RPGs, but one of my fondest gaming moments involves playing the Delta Green scenario Music from a Darkened Room in my late teens. Having since re-examined the scenario I can now see that our GM was actually doing a lot of the heavy lifting, because while the scenario is actually extremely atmospheric and a good haunted house scenario, as an investigation and mystery it largely falls flat because of something of a lack of good mystery structure and issues with the system of Delta Green itself.

But I have since run the scenario in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy by @anim-ttrpgs and it honestly feels like the best way to run it, because Eureka actually has good systemic support for investigative gameplay while also having the mechanical heft to carry the horror elements. If what you want in a horror scenario is "a bunch of regular people getting in too deep into a supernatural mystery," I heartily recommend Eureka.

Mothership is another indie horror RPG I would recommend: it's sci-fi horror in the style of Alien, Dead Space, and Event Horizon, and I think it does a great job of emulating that genre. It is a very straightforward d100 roll under engine with a few interesting twists, and it does a lot with a little. Very much the sort of game to run for your friends where you describe their characters getting killed by spooky space ghosts inside an abandoned space hulk.

However, there's an underrated horror RPG out there: Dungeons & Dragons. Specifically the older editions of the game.

As @cavegirlpoems has also stated, old-school D&D almost plays like a survival horror game: it's largely a game about survival while navigating a hostile space, trying to make use of what little resources are available. If you want fantasy horror you can do a lot worse than just having your friends create a bunch of level 1 characters and putting them inside a dungeon, with the objective being to escape the dungeon. (For an urban fantasy twist on that: run it in Cavegirl's urban fantasy old-school D&D-inspired Esoteric Enterprises.)

Now to move away from the trad games and into the avant garde: Dread is a game that I have wanted to play for a long time. It is a horror game that specifically seeks to emulate the plot beats and structure of a slasher or creature feature through the use of a Jenga tower. Instead of a randomizer like dice or cards the game uses a Jenga set and pulling blocks out of the tower to simulate the danger that characters find themselves in, meaning that as the tower gets more unstable the more tension there is, and with the tower falling meaning character death (followed by the tower being reassembled) to emulate the tension and release of a horror film. It sounds seriously fun and I would love to try it.

[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!

[acrisius-ii]

Here's a question

Why do I like dying so much?

That's not a joke or anything. On paper, I do prefer when games feel more... lethal. Death is common, you should get your skull slammed in, every bullet should hurt a lot, because that's what happens in real life. Dying is great, because it makes you prioritize not dying, which makes you make more interesting decisions.

In practice? I don't like dying. Because dying, historically, has always been bad. In video games, which were and still are a big part of me, dying (especially in a game that my console was not equipped to run, like Cyberpunk) meant a long time not playing the game. It also meant a full reset, which means my carefully laid plans would also be reset, which mean I'd have to do everything again.

Whether it was Destiny (or d2. they still both suck) or Overwatch or even Minecraft (after I had built my base far, far away from spawn), death meant a long walk. Which, to me, was not playing the game. In tabletop terms, dying meant rolling up another character with completely different story, stats, possibly abilities. It also means your GM gets to erase all the planning they've done for the character and replace it with this one.

So, million dollar question-- how do we reconcile this? I'm trying to build a game (TTRPG) that's lethal as hell where every shot can kill you. What I don't want every death is a ten minute break from playing the game where I have to open the pdf for the game and scribble all of it onto my character sheet. Couple ideas:

Buddy Revive: After you hit 0 HP, you spend a round in the ground, time you can take to write new or old stuff on your character sheet. then, you get to come back to life next to an ally and take your turn.

Simple Character Sheet: Nearly the same level of simplicity as a MtG card. Everyone's dying in one hit so no need for an HP track. You get one item, a weapon, and. i dunno, maybe 2 perks.

Predraft Character Sheet: This one's a maybe. I dunno if I wanna make someone write 3 separate character sheets for a single character for each time they die, but it could prove quite interesting if their arsenal is limited in that way. The basic idea is, you make multiple character sheets and everytime you die, you throw that one away. When you respawn, you use another one. Frankly, seems kinda wasteful.

but. just noodling about. i'll probably occam's razor my way down to one that makes me feel the best.

[freezing-kaiju]

IT'S TIME FOR THE NEW 12 EPISODE POLL!!!!! WE BEGIN, WE ENTER, WE LOOK ALIVE! E LOOK TO THE PAST! You voted for familiar creators and friend recs i the past, and the friend recs tend towards longer shows so those'll be for when Dirty Pair's done, but for now, let's go with Familiar Creators!!!! SO!!!

NINE! CHOICES!

Canaan, a TYPE-MOON and Kinoko Nasu story as well as a returnee to the poll. A yuri story involving a Middle Eastern mercenary’s quest for revenge and simultaneous effort to protect her beloved friend, a photographer investigating various things in Shanghai.

Akudama Drive, by Too Kyo Games and Kazutaka Kodaka, of Danganronpa fame. A fake crime-doer and a bunch of very real crimers do One Last Big Heist in the cyberpunk future while being hunted down by the government. Previous poll near-winner, I’ve heard it’s fun, tragic, and possibly even based. Comes most highly recommended of these shows.

Chaos Dragon: Sekiryuu Seneki, by Urobuchi, Nasu, the Durarara guy, one of Kamen Rider Blade’s two writers Shou Aikawa, and two of their friends. It’s a TTRPG adventure! where they each play only one character! God, I NEED to see a show where Gen Urobuchi writes ONLY ONE character! Ultimately it’s a story about a small kingdom’s king trying to stop two larger countries from destroying his smaller one, which feels interesting bc it’s rare to get any TTRPG campaign where there is A Protagonist...

Girls’ Last Tour, source material by the shimeji simulation author, Tsukumizu. Cozy adventures through an apocalyptic dying world. I don’t do well with apocalyptic settings, but I love Shimeji Simulation a lot and I’ve heard so many good things about this one that I wanna give it a shot.

Mermaid Forest, by Rumiko Takahashi, of Ranma 1/2 and Urusei Yatsura. Two immortals who ate mermaids travel to find another mermaid in the hopes they can make them mortal once more. One of those classic kinda tales, and I really wanna see a rumic story that’s.....not 150 eps long...

Magical☆Shopping Arcade Abenobashi BY Hideaki Anno, of Shin Kamen Rider, Shin Godzilla, and Shin Ultraman. What if you were isekaied but it was just into a mall. A wacky hyperdimensional mall. The tone seems extremely lolrandomxd, and it’s one of Anno’s few 12 ep works.

RErideD: Derrida, who leaps through time, character designs by Yoshitoshi ABe of serial experiments lain and Haibane Renmei fame. Guy who made robots gets frozen and wakes up to a robot war, oh fuck. Oh fuck, he’s supposed to protect his best friend’s daughter! AAAAAAAA! Disaster!!! I’m not sure whether he leaps through time any more than once. though.

Katanagatari, by NISIOISIN, creator of Bakemonogatari and Medaka Box. What if a swordless swordsman teamed up with an ambitious shogunate villainess to fulfill her scheme of stealing 12 legendary swords. One of them quality straights kinda shows NisioisiN loves making, seems to have a fun power system that I wanna experience. One of the ones I’ve seen around on tumblr that made me wanna get into liveblogging.

Kino’s Journey, scripted by Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 and Perfect Blue writer Murai Sadayuki, a writer I really think deserves more credit. Does crazy good work in adaptations. Nonbinary adventurer and talking bike go through different parables, functioning as observers of different forms of society and different ways of life.

[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.

[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

[cerinslair]

Clashing Antagonists

Something that I find extremely useful when running a long-form TTRPG is to have not only multiple antagonists, but to have those antagonists be at odds with each other in addition to the player characters.

And I don't just mean as an opportunity for "enemy of my enemy" type diplomacy, alliances, inevitable betrayals, or faction-based game play (although that can also be a bonus, it's not necessarily the function I'm getting at).

I mean as a narrative tool to help keep the story moving in a gratifying way.

Players get stuck while trying to figure out what to do about Villain A? Have them run into Villain B. It spurs motion back into the story, while carrying more narrative weight than a random encounter. Sometimes they'll even elect to switch priorities between villains all on their own if they feel like they've hit a dead end with one or the other; or just feel like it's been too long since they kept tabs on the other villain.

It allows you to change the status quo when things get stuck in a way that isn't just giving the players the answer or fudging dice rolls, and maintains the PCs agency in the game. Maybe once they've caught up with Villain B and foiled their scheme of the day, the issue they were having with Villain A just isn't even relevant anymore. Or maybe they learn something from V.B. they can use to get back on track with foiling V.A.

It creates opportunities for the players to learn more about the villains. Again, not just via "enemy of my enemy" diplomacy - if Villain A keeps tripping up Villain B, seeing that in action or even the aftermath of it can grant the players new insight into both V.A. and V.B. You made these cool bad guys, and you wanna show them off! This is another way of doing that that isn't having the antagonists monologue at the PCs.

This can also help diversify the types of enemies your PCs encounter, even if you don't want multiple groups of villains. You can still make this work by having infighting factions within one overarching group. In the Pokémon TTRPG I've been running, the two branches of the villainous team (a mad scientist branch and an occult branch) are supposed to be working together; but in practice, they mostly compete with each other to prove to their Big Boss that their version of the evil plan is better.

It also creates more opportunities for the PCs to see the effects their choices have on the story. Swat down V.A. hard enough and maybe V.B. has more opportunity to grow in power. Maybe if the PCs can keep both villains occupied fighting each other long enough, they can afford to turn their attention to some other important objective for a while. Sometimes there will be tough decisions over which antagonist to pay more attention to during a certain time period, at the expense of allowing the other to get away with more of their scheme.

It's such a generally helpful tool I've used it in basically every longform game I've run.