#tabletop game dev

[freakflaggames]

https://freakflaggames.itch.io/girl-time

hey so i just spontaneously generated a tabletop game. check out this blurb:

"Girl Time is a roleplaying game set in an unknown era of Ooo from the show “Adventure Time” in which girls are a noble class of adventurers who quest through the land in search of dames to rescue and treasure to find. Girl Time is more focused on narrative and fun than rules and combat. Situations can change from one moment to the next, and women can do anything."

rules-light, shenanigans-heavy, 20 righteous pages, get your girls (lesbians) together and answer the call of adventure!

on the itch page is a link to the original doc. feel free to comment any feedback and copy for homebrewing!

[from-the-notebooks]

Do other ttrpg designers do historical research when making historical games?

I have to assume the GURPS splat books had some behind them but I'm just wondering if its weird that I plan to have a bibliography for my cute little Fate hack? I just want it to be accurate as much as possible.

[thecartonizer]

Shouting out into the void for this one but: any tips for someone who legitimately gave up ttrpg game dev because of both stress over not being able to translate my ideas into the dice stuff and the realization i could not logically make a living out of it but now wants to get back at it with risus or a original system?

[damsels-n-dice]

BIRTHDAY SALE

in celebration of my upcoming birthday, my game 'til it kills us is 80% off! that means you can grab it for just $1 for the next two weeks!

'til it kills us is a game about queer activism, community, and the mental health toll of constantly fighting to survive -- all encased in a urban fantasy setting and the wonderful buddy system. each of the game's nine playbooks is focused on a different negative emotion, which fuels that playbook's unique magical powers. will your characters succumb to the corrupting force of their magic, or improve their own life as they fight to help others?

the game is still in playtesting, so i'm also adding various purchase goals to sweeten the deal! my dream here is to get enough support for this project that i have to add even more goals beyond the first six:

at $3, this game gets a proper cover image

at $5, i'll write a PWYW lyric game next month

at $7,  'til it kills us gets a full formatting update (v0.4)

at $10,  i'll add 5 community copies 

at $15, i'll write a (fully-playable) PWYW game by the end of the year

at $20,  i'll write a setting + character companion book for 'til it kills us

if any of that sounds appealing to you, check out the sale at the game link above, or by going directly to my birthday sale page!

[efangamez]

Only 10 days left to snag this AWESOME TTRPG bundle!! 💛💛

Hey y'all! All of the help you've given me thus far has been truly amazing, and I really wanted to thank you for that 💛 I have used the money this far as a safety net for emergencies and to just enjoy life, whether that means going to the movies once a month or buying an Arizona each day with my walk as I build my strength back up.

We are, however, falling a bit short of our goal. I really want to be able to afford therapy more than anything right now, and visits cost about 100 per visit out of pocket with my insurance. So, if I'm looking to get expensive therapy and psychiatric appointments and official diagnosis, it will cost upward of 2,000+ dollars.

Also, I would really like to have some money to pay off my taxes I owe from 2022. I owe, still, about 3,500+ taxes, which I pay off each month. I pay the absolute minimum so I don't have to dig too deep in monthly costs. If I could pay off a chunk of it in one fell swoop, I could save nearly $500 a year and could nip interest accrued from my taxes in the bud.

Finally, and not as important, I need a new desktop computer. My current one is slowly dying, and the fans are giving out. My power supply is also a bit wonky, and my graphics card is and CPU is outdated, meaning I can't stream games well, nor can I play some games that give me solace. It's not imperative right now, but to have this as an option would be wonderful.

So please, if you would, could you purchase a game bundle? It's countless hours of entertainment with your friends for only $25, almost a FOURTH the cost of a AAA video game with HUNDREDS of hours of content. Not only are you snagging games, but you're also helping out a person in need. It's a win win!!!

Snag the games below, and if you can't purchase anything right now, please kindly reblog!

[lorazx]

BABEL IS OUT ON ITCH.IO NOW!

This game has been the last year and a half of my life, and I am very, very proud of it. You can go and grab it on my itch.io page, for $5 USD! A steal for a full 40 page rulebook, including character sheets and playing board.

Hopefully ya'll like it as much as I loved working on it!

Grab it here: https://lorazx.itch.io/babel

[bugbearstew]

CHECK IT OUT HERE

Need an NPC fast in your Root The Roleplaying Game session? Don't worry, I got you! Click the "Generate" button and you'll get an npc!

You'll see your NPC's age, species, pronouns and some character traits. You'll also get any weapon or gear they have, loot or special items, and a request Finally, you'll see a list of "stats." These are just for fun and jokes but they can help you develop the character even deeper!

Have fun!

Follow me on: twitter- cohost- tumblr- bluesky

Art by Millie @diddgery twitter- cohost- tumblr

Thanks to Meg yyako and Owen esspee for code assistance!

Check out Root The Roleplaying Game by Magpie Games

[goblincow]

GREEN MILK | #008 | save vs despair — mörk borg: a holistic retrospective

:// A little over a month & 14,000 edited & well-considered words later, SAVE VS DESPAIR is complete to read in its entirety.

If you have any interest in TTRPGs or ever wondered what Mörk Borg's whole deal is – this is for you.

I approached it as a writing exercise & design analysis to understand what's so special about this game and art object, and I'm really proud of both this piece and what I learned for my own practice.

If you're invested in the TTRPG scene I'd appreciate it if you shared this with anyone who might enjoy it.

Our artform deserves as much high-quality analysis as we can cultivate, and the fact that I stumbled into writing what is currently the most thorough analysis I could find (which still has huge gaps in its perspective & approach) of one of the most successful games to emerge from the scene in recent years indicates that there is a need to encourage more writing like this.

In a perpetually collapsing digital infrastructure where so much of our design writing is ephemeral and lost to time (I've heard ancient tales of The Forge & Google+ eras, Discord is an unreferencable void & I really hope someone wiser than me is archiving all these podcasts) I hope that longer form writing might represent an opportunity for the ideas we have now to still be accessible (in one form or another) in years to come.

—

Too much patting myself on the back? Maybe.

But it's good writing and I think you'll get something out of it.

Personally I learned that cross posting on multiple platforms is exactly as fun as it sounds (I thought the whole point of starting a newsletter was to avoid this crap in the first place) and by the end of the month I just wasn't posting the illustrations I was making or sharing the last 2 (?) individual parts here as they went up after burning myself out on instagram.

So for the sake of my poor microwaved brain, if any of this interests you:

[mayarab]

Did you guys know I make games? Just released a new one today! Come checl "Whimsical Life" out!

Play as a magical being doing odd jobs around the community! It supports solo-play but you can also play with friends!

[dericbindel]

A Good Plan Never Falls - THE EXPANSION

My tower building heist game, A GOOD PLAN NEVER FALLS, now has an expansion! It features many new rules to play with, including accelerated play, quick start, new Secret Agendas, and a whole fantasy dungeon crawler retheme! Comes along free with the base game!

Get it here:

[devsgames]

Hasbro laid off 1100 people, include large numbers from Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons teams.

Most of the DnD folks who Larian collaborated with on Baldur's Gate 3 were fired by Hasbro and are no longer working at the company. You know, Baldur's Gate 3? The game that won GOTY at The Game Awards and was so unbelievably profitable that it caught everyone, even those making it, off-guard?

If you can make an unexpected smash hit that blows expectations out of the water and you're still not safe, then who is?

Anyway, start organizing your workplace.

[kinas10]

It's Halloween, which means it's time for my yearly promotional post.

Hey gang! I'm a TTRPG dev, and I wrote Myosotis: Forget-Me-Not three years ago. https://kinasten.itch.io/myosotis Myosotis: Forget-Me-Not is a game about death, memory, and character. Specifically, you describe a character's life after their death. This character might be an OC, one made specifically for this game, or my personal favourite; characters from campaigns you never got to finish.

Myosotis is played using a deck of standard playing cards. I chose this for two reasons: 1. A deck has a natural limit/length, and 2. The notion of suits can bring quite a lot of complexity to an otherwise simple mechanic.

In Myosotis, you draw cards, and per value and suit fill out a document according to a prompt. If the suit Red (Hearts/Diamonds), it is 'remembered', meaning you can draw this card value again. If it is black, it is instead forgotten.

Forgotten cards are the last of their kind - any time you draw a forgotten card value again, discard it without filling out the prompt. This simple mechanic means that the length of a game of Forget-Me-Not can vary greatly, but you will never be filling out all four prompts.

At the end of the game, you'll be finishing off your character's death with a eulogy - a short paragraph describing who they were and what they left behind - before granting them an epitaph - a phrase or word that they'll be remembered by. If this sounds like something you'd like to try out, feel free to give it a go! At the end of the game, you'll be finishing off your character's death with a eulogy - a short paragraph describing who they were and what they left behind - before granting them an epitaph - a phrase or word that they'll be remembered by.

Hoping to give it some updates in the coming few weeks. You likely also already own it, if you've bought any number of large scale indie games in the past.

[videogamepolls]

[weirdmallow]

The level up section from my new TTRPG 'Warped'! Since you play as a whole host of different alternate reality versions of your character in 'Warped', levelling up gives you more control over the chaotic energy of the Multiverse, allowing you to change forms more often, open rifts in space and time and summon variants from different dimensions to fight alongside you!

The game has been a joy to develop and the Kickstarter is currently live with only one week to go if you want to back and play your part in bringing this manic multiverse to life!

[mitchelldailygames]

Developer Deep Dive: Arcanists Preview

Oh, Arcanists. What high hopes I had for you.

Arcanists is a game where all players are spellcasters. Think of it like a classic fantasy party of a wizard, a sorcerer, a warlock, and a druid. They travel around using their magic to help communities deal with problems that could range from getting cats out of trees to slaying monsters and diverting natural disasters.

The mechanics go deep on the magic with lots of ways to shape different spells and multiple ways for the spells to do unexpected things. Reflecting on it now, I think the level of negotiation between GM and Arcanists and between players and the rules is pretty high. It worked out OK in my playtesting, but I would understand it being intimidating.

There is a lot I still really love about this game, enough that I might finish it at some point, even if it’s a relatively small release. I think the character creation (which isn’t in the Preview) is really strong. Characters can fit into archetypes while still feeling unique. I think the system for different approaches favoring different outcomes really works. Depending on what approach you prefer, your magic could end up being consistent but rarely surprising or really powerful but chaotic.

I also think the spell system is really cool and goes further into spell creation while still having pretty clear mechanics tied to it than I think I’ve seen in other places. Despite how much time might go into negotiating spell effects, I think it opens a lot of doors for creative problem solving, roleplaying with magic, and playing into disastrous and miraculous consequences of magic gone awry.

I also put a lot of work into the look of this game. I drew lots of runes, drew a decent amount of other art, and worked a lot on graphic design elements. There’s plenty I would probably do differently today, but it was a clear jump forward in my thinking about what a professional product should look like. I think some of that work is good enough that I probably won’t change it when I eventually return to this game.

This game has never gained very much attention, and that’s just how it goes sometimes, but if you check it out you’ll find it comes packaged with pre-generated characters, the rules for using magic, and an adventure. I hope you enjoy!

--Daily

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is a neo-noir investigation-focused RPG with (as you can probably guess from the title) a supernatural twist. Eureka fills several voids we have noticed in the TTRPG space. Eureka supports investigation to a degree we haven’t seen before, ensuring that searching for clues is a granular and player-driven process, but also ensuring that the whole story doesn’t grind to a halt after one single failed investigation check.

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

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

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is kickstarting from right now until May 10th! Back it while you still can!

If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!

Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

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.