#or maybe GURPS

[doctorofrestoration]

If I had a nickel for every time today I saw someone call PBtA a perfect system, I'd have 2 nickels. That's not a lot buts it's weird that it happened twice.

THINGS I AM UNREASONABLY ANNOYED ABOUT BY GAME SYSTEM

D&D: Please put a disclaimer that you are not a universal system. Every time I see someone try to do a political mystery game in D&D, I take 3d10 psychic damage and have to make a death saving throw.

Pathfinder: Look. If i wanted to play a game about fighting Cthulhu there is an extremely famous game specifically designed around doing that. Literally no-one is ever going to say "Wow, I want to play a Cthulhu themed game! Time to stat up a musical halfling from a magical fantasy land!".

Chronicles Of Darkness: Just admit no-one uses any of your rules. You have Social Door Rules and Integrity Conditions and Corruption Levels and I bet at most 50% of COD players could tell me which of those I made up. Just admit people aren't dressing up as Alucard The Bringer Of Shadows because they want to sit down and do calculus.

World Of Darkness: You know that old guy who's still doing his job even though he is way too old to do it any more, but he's now an institution so you can't get rid of him? Like that. The 90s called and they want literally everything about this back.

Call Of Cthulhu: I appreciate the commitment to authenticity, but maybe stop hiring actual disgraced mental asylum directors from the 1920s to design your sanity system?

GURPS: Look. Look. Listen. We both know that you just want to write history textbooks. These are history textbooks with a few stat blocks begrudgingly put in. If you just give me a book on early Chinese history I will read it and go "ah, very interesting!". You don't need to put in a list of character choices. We're all nerds. We'll read them. Live your best life.

Powered By The Apocalypse: I actually can't think of anything wrong with PBTA. That's not a bit, this is literally the perfect system. Take notes everyone else.

Mutants and Masterminds/Heroes System: Your systems have probably the most customizable character creation in the world and you both just make reskins of the Justice League over and over again. Maybe we only need one "thinly veiled copyrighted characters" setting? You can fight over it once you decipher your combat mechanics.

FATE: Ok I won't lie, I have no idea how the fuck FATE works. I have read the rules repeatedly and played three games and I still have no idea what invoking an aspect means. I don't know why. I grasped the rules of fucking Nobilis but this one just psychologically eludes me. This is more a problem with me I guess, but I'm still annoyed.

Warhammer 40k: Have you considered spending less on avocado toast? Then you might be able to afford to charge less for things?

Exalted: Apart from the lore, the setting, the mechanics, the metaplot, the character creation and the dodgy narrative implications, I can't think of anything to improve here.

[owlbear33]

so yeah, Dresden Files werewolves, there're at least 4 different types and I'm thinking about how you would handle that in a ttrpg

and like sure you could handwave a lot of it, but you know what I'm like

I want a decently granular (point costed) monster creation tool, and a similarly granular (point costed) power and magic item creation tool

so you can build up your werewolf form stats, reduce the cost by adding weaknesses, limitations on how you can enter the werewolf form, and how much control you have over your werewolf form, so you know how much XP/CP(character points) you need to spend to get that

the three/four different Dresden Files werewolves will have differences in all three of those categories the Alphas get a lot of control and can activate not quite at will, but have maybe the least powerful wolf form, the hexenwolves have better wolf forms, but have less control, and their transformation is tied to a magic belt (can be taken away), the Loup-garou has the beefiest werewolf form, it auto activates on a full moon and otherwise can't be used, the person inflicted with the curse has no control over the wolf form (and is probably treating this way of being a werewolf as a flaw)

there's probably a GURPS book for this isn't there

[swxrdie]

I should use this Tumblr more to write down the dumb ideas that've been sticking with me for a while, so... here we go!

Dramatical Murder (DMMD), but it's a tabletop campaign and the people who play Aoba and the main love interests have no idea what DMMD is (they can name the characters and give them personalities based on their appearance alone). The people who do know what DMMD is play the NPCs, and try to guide the main players through the plot while sticking closely to canon events as much as possible.

...With that in mind, it's going to be chaotic and practically not DMMD as a result, but I'd love to just see how it'd all go. I'm a newbie GM, I've GMed a short SPELL: The RPG one-shot, am currently running a Rings & Running Shoes short campaign, and am currently also learning to run the Jojo's Bizarre Tabletop system. The things I would do to make this dumb idea work LMAO!

(As a player, I've been playing in 2 D&D campaigns that have been going for more than a year, so also take that what you will.)

[thefalloutwiki]

Were you previously aware...

That Fallout isn't the only franchise to use the SPECIAL system? It was also used by Black Isle in Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader.

You can read more about the SPECIAL system here

You can also check out Lionheart on Steam here

[orion-disease]

ok mx. my wife is 30 feet tall and we fuck [have never held hands]

[euronymous4e]

I'm begging you to play a better game.

The fact that there are D&D 5e players who don’t know how the rules work is so absurd to me. Like, they’ve had the basic rules up for free since before the rulebooks were even in stores, so even not having the rulebook is no excuse. At that point you’re doing it on purpose.

[oldestenemy]

still thinking about gulag session from yesterday

and about antonella doing a full 180 from offering to help a guard bandage up his tiger-bitten-arm to slitting his gd throat.

[white-weasel]

Realizing I could just run a GURPS campaign that’s set up with the same rules as the nonary game and it could feasibly work

[indierpgnewsletter]

The Tom Bloom Phenomenon and Sub-cultures Generally

For the first time ever (as far as I can tell anyway), there are 5 games in the top 10 of itch.io that are from the same creator.

Tom Bloom is an artist probably best known for his comic, Kill 6 Billion Demons. He’s also one-half of Massif Press and co-creator of the tactical mecha game, Lancer. And recently, he’s been publishing games under his own solo label, Chasm.

So far, under Chasm, he’s put out three products, which are all in the Top 4. Magnagothica: Maleghast is a miniatures war game without the miniatures. The assumption is that you’ll play it online using his stylish art. Cain is a dark investigation game where trained supersoldiers hunt down monsters created by trauma. And then there’s Games for Freaks, which is a little magazine that contains supplementary material for his other games.

As far as lineage goes, my understanding is that Bloom’s primary touchstone for narrative games is Blades in the Dark (oh, look, a new supplement is out). He tends to combine that with various degrees of crunchy combat, stunning art, shonen anime aesthetics, and angst. They sound interesting but I don’t know if I’ll ever get to play them. Lancer was definitely too rules-y for me.

I’m talking about this because I think it’s interesting that more and more, the huge diversity of RPG clusters are becoming apparent to me. This newsletter tries to take a wide view of the gaming scene but because I’m writing it, there’s a focus on storygames. There’s thriving groups and sub-groups that I almost never talk about – those around World of Darkness or GURPS or the 2d20 games from Modiphius or all the new Osprey Games or Jenna K Moran’s work or even solo games or larps or lyric games. And of course, there’s geographies and technologies and on on.

It’s not about the absolute number of the population of these various sub-groups – that’s not where their notability comes from. The point for me is that there is a huge diversity in the breadth of “who is playing tabletop RPGs”. There is a huge variation in what is considered approachable, fun, interesting, life-affirming, comforting, and so on. Anyone still talking about what games are or should be (without the requisite nuance) is just wasting their time.

We don’t all share the same context anymore. The games that you know aren’t the games I know. The way you play isn’t the way other people play. And this is a part of broader cultural trends – globalism, the rise and fall of mass culture, consumerism, monopolization – all of which I’m not smart enough to explain in 600 words. But it was also always the case – maybe it was just a little harder to see.

I think there are a lot of people who, like me, have a curiosity that exceeds their grasp. Thanks to Rascal, I get to do some spelunking into these communities. But I really can’t do them all. And I really shouldn’t. I’m excited for folks from all these groups to speak for themselves to others – to articulate their own contexts and speak passionately about what brings them together. That’s not easy honestly. It’s hard to talk about games without some critical language and some broader sense of the landscape and so on. But at the same time, we can figure that out along the way. I’d definitely like to help.

This first appeared on the Indie RPG Newsletter: https://ttrpg.in/2024/11/03/the-tom-bloom-phenomenon-and-sub-cultures-generally/

[tiredfoxtf]

GURPS stands for Generic Universal Role-Playing System, which is basically what it's says on the tin. It's a tabletop RPG system which you can play with your friends.

People really overestimate how complex gurps is as a system. There's only 3 types of rolls and one of them is totally optional. Most of the math is either already done For You or it's written on your character sheet. And you do not need anything more than 3 6 sideded dice to play the game.

[txttletale]

TBQH most of popular "alternatives" to D&D are either Pathfinder or both very different and rules heavy. Like maybe if you directly ask someone who knows things you would get proper recommendations (I sure as hell know systems that allow me to do fantasy better, both very different and D&D-but-simpler), but not simply from osmosis. From osmosis you would know GURPS, World of Darkness, Dark Heresy, Savage Worlds, and a bunch of PbtA games, and half of that is more complicated than D&D and most also more setting-specific.

(Yeah there is probably a PbtA game for everything but like you still have to find specific games)

i cannot imagine any possible metric by which 'd&d' or 'pathfinder' are games that aren't insanely, overwhelmingly, rules-heavy and setting-specific

[thydungeongal]

Hi, same anon obsessed with morality.

Okay, I admit that my ask was a bit too emotional because non-evil original roleplaying games exist even in sword and sorcery style (World of Dungeons and Oracle are some I would recommend), and existence of Gondal setting testifies that it's not a male thing in any way.

However, my probably naive concern goes a little further - I don't play D&D, but I use it for monsters and settings. It's hard to invent absolutely everything from a scratch, you know? But this leads to an ethical concern I have - doing this is still feeding into D&D hegemony and embracing Gygax's and Arneson's rotten legacy (though I am starting to think that Gygax was a lesser evil, holy fuck). And let's not fool ourselves here - derivative games like Pathfinder or Knave are still their legacy (though maybe Cairn isn't, I am not sure).

So like, what are options of games that are generic fantasy that have a lot of monsters and settings to steal and that are also both not "D&D but different" and aren't objectively evil?

I know literally a handful of candidates, so I am asking your followers to share. And no, Warhammer isn't such game.

What I remember is:

Fantasy Age is not without a sin, but it's presented as "you can depict these demi-humans as equal people or you can be a hitler, it's up to you", so progress I guess?

Jackals is built on OpenQuest and is pretty generic if you exclude it being about bronze age, but I remember some potentially creepy details of how it treats demi-humans

Blue Rose looks the most morally fine, but it's not exactly generic

Lightmaster is ugh, because it doesn't have inherently evil demi-humans, but it has inherently different demi-humans who are always savages, so it's a thin ice (though otherwise it's a blast)

D6 Fantasy doesn't really have monsters in core book, but there are probably third-party bestiaries that may even not be vile

GURPS does have bestiaries of fantasy creatures, but I don't know anything about their morality

IDK about rolemaster, but you said that it's not good.

So like, which extremely ethical non-OSR heartbreaker that was published ever am I missing? Should I look into Das Schwarze Auge, or does it suck the same way?

Ultimately I think you're thinking about this too much to your own detriment. It's good to be aware of the fact that lots of (especially older) fantasy stuff does carry some fucked up expectations and approach it with a critical eye so you don't end up replicating it, but if you become single-minded in your pursuit of the perfect, unproblematic fantasy RPG you're not only setting yourself up for disappointment but also denying yourself a lot of stuff that's good but flawed.

Anyway, not a game but a supplement for OSR games, but Skerples' Monster Overhaul is pretty good in this regard and does this via simply accepting the revolutionary paradigm of "orcs are just some guys."

Another game out of the left field, Chivalry & Sorcery is really surprising in this regard, because it's the sort of game that gives off vibes of being written by "the presence of women in a medieval setting is extremely inaccurate" types, but the authors actually make a point of saying that player enjoyment and comfort should always take precedence over adherence to historicity when it comes to issues like players wanting to play women or queer characters. But it's in its treatment of orcs and trolls (and as far as I've understood, dwarves and elves too, but I haven't read that supplement yet) where it gets really cooking. Chivalry & Sorcery is a game written by medieval history nerds and they wanted their game's worldbuilding to adhere to a medieval European paradigm. So when it came to adding orcs into the game the authors asked "how would orcs fit into the worldview of a medieval Christian?"

The answer is that just as medieval Christian philosophers mused that if cynocephali or those guys who only had one big foot were to exist then surely they must be just some guys, orcs would also have to be just some guys. This means that they would be human in terms of having been created by God and tracing descent to Adam and Eve and also could receive the eucharist and be saved.

Anyway, all of which is to say that the middle ages were woke,

[theresattrpgforthat]

hello! i was wondering if theres any ttrpgs set in/inspired by Terry Pratchett's Discworld? thanks :)

THEME: Discworld

I love the Discworld books and I'm very glad you asked this question. I have three resources for you!

A One In A Million Chance At Adventure, by Jocher Symbolic Systems.

This is a game where you play the roles of, often unwilling, sometimes zealous, pawns in the cosmic octarine coloured narrative. Your character is not necessarily a "hero" per se, instead one could possibly see it as being important to the story. Characters like yourself do have a knack for not dying as often as a common mortal (or undead if that has been your unfortune).

With this follows that you'll naturally have a higher chance of actually, possibly, doing some heroic deeds, just by sheer mathematical logic. Unless, of course, you are the type of adventurer who'd prefer a cup of hot tea and soft slippers and a reliable day job.

That does severely reduce the odds of let's say beheading a mythical beast of ill repute or befriending the immodest wood nymphs of Howondaland*.

*if your day job happens to be for example a tax collector this is not true, this and similar careers have shown to increase the risk of leaving the disc rather early.  ** only rumoured, no one who has gone looking for them has ever returned.

This is a free, fan-made d10-based game written in the style of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, footnotes and all. The characters you build are expected to be flawed in some way - they have vices that can cause problems for them and plenty of skills (or spells) to help them get out of trouble.

A One in A Million Chance At Adventure has plenty of supplements to support the game, including an introductory adventure: The Murder of Dominick Kolchak, and a character supplement: The A-M Professions Character Build Guides.

Discworld Roleplaying Game, by Steve Jackson Games.

There's a lot of unusual stuff on the Disc, but don't worry about getting lost – game author Phil Masters has crafted a roadmap to Pratchett-inspired storytelling.

Visit settings like the most dubious city in the multiverse, Ankh-Morpork. Intervene in the cultural interactions of trolls and dwarves (but watch out for flying axes). Campaign for goblin rights. Flee from an angry Swamp Dragon (two feet of mindless fury and high-explosive digestion). Even find out why the second-greatest lover on the Disc needs a stepladder.

And remember, the world is round. And also flat.

This is the official roleplaying game published by Steve Jackson Games, the creators of Munchkin and GURPS - which means that this game also uses the GURPS system. Characters are pretty in-depth and require some time to put together - and that means the the core rulebook is a pretty hefty read. If you like big games with heavy modularity and a lot to chew on, maybe this game is for you!

If you want to try the game out and need a little help, there’s a GURPS Character sheet app available to help you put characters together, and Chris Normand is an avid enthusiast with many videos providing advice on how to get a grip on the system.

The Kleptomancer’s Crypt, by Max Kāmmerer.

The Kleptomancer’s Crypt is an adventure for Troika!, but is easily adapted to other systems. It mostly consists of tables to help you generate a variable adventure. Improvisation and interpretation by the GM required. 

A client hired you to break into the Kleptomancer’s Crypt and so you did. Now you need to get out of the place. The Kleptomancer is a government official tasked with redistributing the wealth by stealing from the rich and keeping what they stole for themselves. Okay, that last part isn’t in the official job description. The Crypt is filled with all kinds of strange things and rooms and people, really. You might for example encounter pipe smoking sloths, boardgame playing plants, ever expanding spheres or the Kleptomancer’s apprentice. The place is dangerous, so you prepared by cutting a deal with death, preventing you from dying while you are in the Crypt.

To be clear, this is not a full game. It is simply an adventure for one.

The eclectic tone of Troika fits Discworld so well that I’m not at all surprised that there is an adventure made for it. If you have experience with Troika, or even with other OSR games, you might want to check this one out.

[least-evil-resident]

medieval resident evil au where Umbrella is a cabal of dark mages trying to unlock the secrets to lichdom and go mad learning secrets from the undead eldritch horror outside of space and time

Chris and Jill are Knights in service of the Order of Stars, Leon is a beginning town guard, Ada is still a spy, honestly not much is different

If you give them ttrpg character sheets then it's even more fun

Would guns be wands, badass Crossbows, or straight up magic, or different based on the game? They could also just be guns but that wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

Consider pistol=dagger, rifle=longsword, shotgun=axe? Grenades could be hand bombs or magic.

Or pistol=hand crossbow, rifle=light crossbow, shotgun is either special bolt or a spell

Beneath the cobblestone streets of raccoon city, where gaslamps and auto-carriages ramble, is the lair of an evil sect of mages developing spells in secret to transform humans into beasts

Could be very bloodborne-esque. Lots of fire and brimstone. Maybe STARS are more like paladins, and the bsaa is an order of Templar type organization.

If we go dnd 5e rules, Chris is a fighter for sure, Jill is like a rogue I guess? Leon could go either. It could be fun to make Claire like a sorcerer since she gets the grenade launcher

In later games I think Chris definitely fits either paladin or barbarian, where Leon goes for more rogue/maybe ranger vibes. Jill seems more rogue+fighter but magic rogue is cool, maybe artificer. Claire would be sorcerer multiclass I think. Keep any mages low powered that way.

Sherry in 6 is maybe warlock or aasimar instead of Cleric? Blood hunter would be cool. Rebecca starts as a Cleric in 0 for sure. For a low magic setting where research and Rituals are matched by quick, small combat spells, how high of a DC do you think enemies would go?

Of course, in a classless system like gurps or all flesh, this would be a lot less restrictive. What would be the best system for resident evil normally? What would be the best one for its fantasy au?

Wesker very much fits the low-fantasy vampire theme. He has a reflection and can step in he sunlight but wow it hurts his eyes. Chris rolls a 20 to punch a boulder to death.

Leon has the lucky feat or 20 in dex or something to pull off his stunts. Chris also gets Charisma as a leader for the bsaa, so paladin is up his alley. Leon's secret service requires more rogue skills, but his time in operation javier trains his skills as a Ranger under Krauser maybe?

Jill and Claire both get grenade launchers, but Jill is more Rogue with her lockpicking so it makes sense for them to switch level ups later on as claire learns more professional skills for rogue training.

Barry definitely hits fighter/barbarian with his heavy weapons. Jake is maybe more monk/barbarian but with something like a dhampir ancestry feature? Sheva is maybe rogue/fighter or paladin fighter since thats when chris starts taking paladin levels. Billy has to be rogue/fighter I think, or maybe fighter/rogue, if he even gets a second class. It would almost make sense for him to be pure rogue and rebecca be cure cleric, since she retires to become a researcher and hes never heard from again. Helena is I guess just plain rogue, hinting at her role in 6, while Leon has his ranger levels. Piers is more rogue/Ranger (or fighter archer). A lot of the one off teammates just don't get super interesting classes as a consequence of their limited appearance. Carlos... Fighter? Just fighter is fine.

Now, the problem here is that each game starts off with little to no equipment for various reasons. In the case of our spell casters like claire and jill, we can't just de-level them between adventures in the resident evil campaign. But we could give them more limited access to spell components to match the resource management of survival horror.

This is more complicated outside of dnd 5e, where a game like All Flesh Must Be Eaten has very different spellcasting rules, so you'd need to stray from a low-magic to a straight low-fantasy setting. Alchemist tools and one use spell scrolls replace your grenades and spell casting maybe? That's the issue you'd run into with treating the setting as one campaign instead of each game as an individual campaign though.

The easiest one to do is RE8. It's literally the same. Ethan starts 7 as a human Commoner, takes levels in artificer as the game goes on, since that one introduced crafting, and comes back very subtly as a human variant with a few new levels in fighter from chris' tutoring. Hey that means we can give Hiesenburg an artificer friend! Class buddies ♡ hiesenburg is probably artificer/sorcerer, giving him charisma and intelligence. Dimetrescu is maybe barbarian if she even gets class levels.

I don't think we can justifiably say Rose is a variant human, I think she gets her own custom ancestry features for this. Sorcerer also feels better than Druid for her, but a couple levels in - you guessed it, rogue! Cover her gun and Stealth skills. You get a lot or rogues and fighters in low powered/low fantasy settings, who knew lol

[duckduckbear]

“Well, I better go. Everyone seems to be gone.” They announced to the only other person in the room.

“Thanks for coming it…*Hig* was good to see you. I didn’t know you weren’t *burp* drinking anymore, I wouldn’t have gotten so *urp* drunk. “

“No problem, It was good seeing ya. I had fun. Maybe I’ll stop by in a few weeks and we can hang and watch a movie?”

“Sure!”

Next week

“Hey, how are ya?”

“Oh, hey *burp* I wasn’t expecting ya. I’m a little drunk, hope that’s like, ok?”

“No problem, It doesn’t bother me, I’ve been in control a while.”

*stumbles* “I’m gonna get another few beers, be right back”

*Puts two beers down on the coffee table*

*Slurring a bit* “Go ahead and have that other beer *gurp*. I’m full. One beer won’t knock you off the wagon”

Just the one.

(Well…)

*crack* *sip*

TO BE CONTINUED

[puppytoast]

i love your fox girls please tell me about your fox girls

I have found some time to let me ramble into this box for an hour LETS GO...

First of all thank you I also love my fox girls. I also assume you are probably the same person sending me misc asks about foxgirls regularly which I keep them because I like them so don't be discouraged that I don't answer them all the time lol

I can go on for a long time so I'll just keep things about Tetra today...

This is Tetra.

This is also Tetra.

They are the same character but I have implemented her into two universes. She was originally made for my GURPS (ttrpg) game and then I adapted her into my own headworld setting; Vanus. She is very slightly different between the two settings, but overall it is the same character and the way I draw her just determines the setting i'm drawing for at the moment. I tend to talk about both of these versions of her randomly but for the sake of things being entirely my own writing and not things from the TTRPG I play her in.

I'll be mostly talking about Vanus Tetra today. (So the one on the right)

Tetra is a sarcastic socially awkward alchemist who likes to test new reagents and concoctions by putting them in her mouth and immediately getting sick. She is a laid back, mostly carefree weirdo. She is very interested in making medicines for people, however she also has a blatant fascination with poisons to the point where her continued taste testing has given her a poison resistance. Her ears are floppy because she has overly sensitive hearing. She likes harmless pranks. She is so aroace she does not understand innuendos nor any kind of flirting to the point of confusion. The list goes on.

Tetra was born to a ~rather important~ sorceress and her bodyguard. What exactly the important thing they are doing remains unknown, but for REASONS they had to leave her in the care of her mother's old friend/other bodyguard, Terasu, when she was PRETTY young Probably around 8-10 or so.

Terasu basically raised her for a few years, lending a lot to Tetra's snarky and mischievous personality and the way she presents herself. However Terasu was chronically ill and was very good at hiding it. When her illness suddenly took a turn for the worse she sought the help of an old dragon alchemist that lived in the depths of a dark fungal jungle. He did his best to help, however Terasu ended up succumbing to her illness, leaving a still very young Tetra with this rather eccentric dragon they had both dubbed "Grampa" when she was about 12.

Grampa took her in and taught her alchemy due to her unyielding persistence in wanting him to teach her. She fixated on the craft, believing that if she had known sooner she could have done anything to prevent her caretaker's death, and wanted to do all she could to help others in the future.

She took to the craft incredibly quickly and her skill grew just as fast. She easily adjusted to her life in the fungal woods and grew very attached to Grampa, treating him like a father figure. Before either of them knew it, she had been there studying alchemy for a good 15 years... However Grampa when she started living there was already very old, even for being an older-lived species, and when he passed, it basically broke her. First her parents vanished, then her caretaker died from illness, now she had lost Grampa too. She had already developed a separation anxiety at this point and this amplified it to the point where, despite burying him herself, she was still regularly talking to Grampa, acting like none of it had happened, like he was still there.

Due to her psychosis, "Grampa's" guidance caused her to set off from home truly for the first time. To gather new reagents for alchemy, to hone the skill more and to potentially meet new people. Maybe figure out what the hell happened to her parents, because she is definitely mad about that. She is an odd animal trying to learn how to process grief and discover a found family. She is sad but she stays silly to the point where it's not something you would notice unless you spent a lot of time with her since she is too busy generally being a weird goofball to let others in the know of her own problems.