#tabletop planning

[dericbindel]

A GOOD PLAN NEVER FALLS

Proud to realease my second ttrpg!

A GOOD PLAN NEVER FALLS is a one-shot gm-less roleplaying game for 2-5 players focused on infiltrating a TOWER and making off with THE GOODS held within. The group builds up with a tumbling block game, with each move taking everyone closer to collapse or success!

In addition to the challaenge of building the TOWER tall enough, ever memeber of the Crew will also get a Secret Agenda detailing extra conditions the need to meet to get their BONUS.

Get it here!

[vintagerpg]

Here is Battle Plan (1989 originally, this edition from circa 1991), from Flying Buffalo. It’s what I imagine is a fairly typical military strategy play by mail game to be — there are rules for industry development, budget management, espionage, diplomacy, propaganda and the usual flavors of combat. The focus is on conquering Europe in a historically vague time period, but there are variants for a simulation of World War II as well as a world-wide version.

I can nearly understand the basic functionality of the mechanics here, though the shorthand for orders is punishing to parse. I can not imagine actually playing this, though — I don’t know how I would parse all the information. I need a board and chits or something, I think? It’s too abstract, I’d be too siloed in my own business and unaware of my opponents until it was too late.

Nice stippled cover art by Steve Crompton.

[sleepy-stitches]

google search how to safely have my friends from other groups smell each other through the door like cats so they can be introduced

[yunisverse]

Dusted off an old character concept: retired fae warlock whose patron is his ex. He still gets powers as child support.

Tried to test out a bunch of Dad Hair looks to figure out the appropriate Big Dad Energy

[captaincleverusernamehere]

All of the NSBU system is 4 pages and two of them are the abilities and group suites you can purchase with turbo tokens. I love this. I want to run this SO bad.

[bloodborne-on-pc]

Played a new tabletop RPG called CAIN last night and it's been living rent-free in my head for the last 24 hours. Genuinely such a simple and engaging system, with just enough lore to inspire you without restricting you.

[dyrewrites]

Due to a missing party member, I've been enlisted to take over DM duties so the kid doesn't miss out on the current campaign.

This means I'll be prepping to run a Ravenloft game all week instead of writing. Thankfully there's a mostly pre-gen introductory thing I can employ to test how spooky I can get, because it is a horror setting and that's important to know.

I've run games before but not in this setting, and while I am very excited, I am also very tired and my brain is dominated by gay vampires.

So I don't know how well this will go...

But! I wanted to warn all you creatures here that there might be less going on here this week.

I over-plan when I DM and all my attention will be on this until I've got a decent amount of story/quests/npcs/progression worked out for the next three weeks for them to completely obliterate and ignore and force me to come up with new ones on the fly enjoy.

[libras-interactives]

#FINALLY final spring girlies are gonna eat

Ahhhh I'm so excited that you're working on Last Spring again!!! <3

Im trying!!! Its slow going but going

[longfurbybitchboi]

One of the background ambiences in The Ravening War is the one that I use in my dnd campaign!!!! That means I’m doing something right, right?!

Also that video of Brennan talking about burrows end and listening to ambient background music he’s just like me foreallll

[ghostr0tz]

feeling like this as i sit in my desk ... finally little less busy so my treat to myself is working on finishign requests and writing today >:3 !

[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:

[theonyxpath]

On this day in 2021 we unleashed They Came From Plan 9! Characters and Story Hooks for They Came From Beneath the Sea! as part of our Storypath Tasty Bits program. Available now in PDF via our partners at DriveThruRPG https://drivethrurpg.com/product/365748/They-Came-From-Plan-9?affiliate_id=13&src=OPPTumblr

[jeff-from-marketing]

Hi, I need to be autistic for a moment. Ahem.

STARFINDER SECOND EDITION REAL???

Okay I've got that out my system, what else is here-

FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH PATHFINDER SECOND EDITION???????

Alright, I should be good now.

No not really, but less shouting this time. I'm so fucking hype for this. Genuinely, I went looking for a spacefaring sci-fi TTRPG a little while ago and didn't find anything that quite did what I wanted.

Scum and Villainy is a great system, but it's also incredibly rules lite. That's an awesome thing for those who like those style of games, and there's a lot of merit to the Forged in the Dark system. Hell, there's a reason both Lancer and ICON take huge chunks from it for its narrative gameplay! But, it didn't exactly give me a lot to bite into. I'm someone who absolutely adores playing with game rules, theory crafting, etc. I like a like a little crunch. So this game, as good as it is, didn't quite scratch the itch. I do love the references in the book though!

I did take a quick look at Stars Without Number, and while it sure does have the crunch, it has it in places where I don't want it. The game in general feels very old school in a lot of ways, which is great if that's what you're after, but it very much was not what I wanted.

Even Starfinder 1e isn't quite what I wanted. It's probably the closest, but I've really become quite jaded to the D&D 3.5e and D&D 5e styles of gameplay. Having seen so many other systems now, they really do feel quite clunky and unintuitive to me. If you still enjoy those systems, more power to you! But I don't, so while this was close: it's no cigar.

And then there's the plethora of 5e hacks. Yeah no. There's a reason I dropped D&D 5e as hard as I did. Well... There's several, but shhh.

So, hearing that Paizo is making Starfinder 2e that's in line with Pathfinder 2e rules? That's almost literally a dream come true, that's exactly the kind of thing I was on the hunt for! It's no secret that I love Pathfinder 2e, I have several happy rants here about the topic (and one that haunts me because it keeps getting notes) and I do think it's very well designed in a lot of very important ways.

Finally, it seems like I'll be able to have the spacefaring sci-fi game with just the right amount and kind of crunch that I've been looking for!

You bet your ass I'm fucking hype.

As a side note: I love that they gave the giant lizard lady a giant gun. That's fun

[running-tweezers]

Yeah I’m definitely gonna be MIA for most of this month, it is turning out to be a really busy one. Good busy. Exciting busy. But Busy.

If anything exciting happens someone let me know lol

[aurosoulart]

Beam Saber update: here’s the first draft of Sunlith’s frame! I still need to add weapons and design the hatch mechanism that accommodates and connects to his exopod (the floating ‘suit’ some uplifted dolphins wear to get around outside water - if you look closely you can see Sunlith inside the pod!)

[rizzenm]

Before we get started...

Hello and well met!

I am Rizzen and I run a Dungeons & Dragons game called The Misbegotten, and it is now going on its fifth year. The game's official start date was August 23, 2019 at 8:39 p.m. That is when I created the document that would be all my secret plans for the adventurers  that would eventually be called The Misbegotten.

I started this game to get to know some of my classmates better, as I was 1,500 miles away from everything and everyone I ever knew. What it grew into was a story, a world, and friends that I love, appreciate, and admire very dearly. So dearly in fact, that I wanted to start this. More for myself, to write out my thoughts in a more public way so that I stop feeling that I am trapped with all the knowledge and no one to talk to about it. I am hoping to use this blog as a way of chronically this story in a way I am not quite comfortable in my own secret DM notes, which is more often than not a series of bullet points. I want to share this story like how I would tell my friend over dinner at a diner, not a “X person here. Y person dead” that I use to help in the game.

I may also share my occasional takes on gaming as a whole because I don't like getting into Twitter arguments, and I don't want all my thoughts to be couped up in my brain all day. To end this inaugural post I am going to share what might be my most valuable insight into not just D&D, but games as a whole and it may give you insight as to how I run my games:

Games are an art, and like any art their approach to an audience, or in our case, a player can very. I believe that Dungeons & Dragons and most other TTRPGs is a love letter. It is a game that is played best when it is approached by all who play it with an immense and intense, love.

A love letter is a kind of poetry. I have read a lot of poems in my life and I’ve found I’m not the biggest fan of most poems. It probably has something to do with the fact I’m real shit at writing them, but that’s a whole different story. However despite my general dislike of most poems I have read, I have found the best poems ever written and they all start the same, “To, Rizzen.” Now none of you will ever see those poems, because they are for me, the same way I can’t see the love letter written to you. Now you may be asking yourself at this point, “What does any of this have to do with games?” To which I will reply, I’m getting to it.

Over 22 (nearly 23) years ago I was born, and like everyone else we all got delivered our first love letter, our name. My name came with something extra, the love of a game.

Rizzen, is an elven bladesinging, magic collector who has a dislike of violence. Much more into the behind the scenes skullduggery and general roguish behavior of the Forgotten Realms rather than upfront heroics. He is played by my father.

Dungeons & Dragons, a game he grew up with, that he played with his father, that he played with his friends, my mother, people that he loved. If he was told to put his love for the game into a singular word I think that word would be, Rizzen, and he gave that name and that love of game to me.

Before I ever played Dungeons & Dragons I heard of the stories that Rizzen and his companions would get up to. The funny, the triumphant, the sad, the heroic and most of all the absolute love my parents had for the game. The game my dad played in was a letter signed and sealed in love that has expanded a generation.

Now here I am, with more than half of my life dedicated to this game. A game that has defined my career path. A game that I attribute to being the sole reason I ever had any romantic partners. A game that I was born out of love for.

What follows this post are my love letters to the people I have the privilege of DMing for and their love letters to me.