#trpg setting

[cassegrainarts]

Since I've become a dungeon master, I create my own campaign setting. There are five worlds, each of them has its own features, history, races, etc. But there's also a unique race common in four of five worlds - cergals. They share the same background, and even the pantheon of gods shares the same names and features.

I will add tags #The Five Worlds and #The Legends of Inskaar to mark every post with characters and lore from my setting.

I've never drawn all of the gods, but here are two of them, and some of them are planned. But you'll never see the Great Architect because the Great Architect is me :D Ofc I'm joking, I wish to draw him someday.

⬆ This is Zereassus - the Supreme God of Creation. The title is wrong but he is worshipped as the divine father of the living, so his name is a tradition across the Five Worlds. Traditionally depicted with five eyes, each of them gazing at its own world. Zereassus' horns hold a ringed planet this god represents (the Five Worlds are the moons of a gas giant, rotating on their axis due to the forces of magic, which is additional to regular laws of physics).

⬆ This is Aelian - the goddess and creator of the world of technology which is unique among the Five Worlds. Its people exclude cergals (they actually were there but disappeared after the magical accident caused by the mages of Yst tried to raise to godhood but failed (nod to Magisters Sidereal, ahahah), and this influenced the whole world and the nearest one, Aelian), there's the one and only existing race (aelians btw), they can't cast spells like other races do that, because each use of magic shortens their life, so they are good at tech, and have the power of creation - the only case in the Five Worlds - to give the life and consciousness to their creations. Can you imagine the sentient spacecraft? Yeah, they can make such!

Aaaaaaaand here is the cherry on top of the cake: the creation myth.

In the beginning, there was chaos. And chaos once gave birth to the Great Architect whose goal was to establish order in the Universe. And the Architect created space and time, turned chaos into matter, and created stars from that matter, and told them: "I give you the abilities to create life by your own design. Fill the world and transform it." That's how the first gods appeared. The Architect turned himself into energy and dispersed throughout the universe, but he did not cease to exist.

The Architect's two children, Zereassus and Qntaraan, space and time, were inseparably linked and could not exist without each other. They decided to continue the divine kind according to the Architect's design and created five children of their own - Zer, Otann, Yst, Xass and Aelian. That wasn't enough for Zereassus, and he wanted to create something else. Keeping it from Qntaraan, he planned to create more gods in his own image, and brought his plan to life. That's how the first cergals appeared. Each of them had three eyes.

However, it did not escape the eyes of Qntaraan. She became enraged and said: "Don't you have enough of what we do together? You shouldn't have created anything without me, it violates the order that the Architect designed! In that case, I will take away eternity and infinity from your children, they will not find shelter and will wander alone in the universe, giving birth to the same creatures in their doomed existence, whose life will be short! And you won't see me anymore!" At that moment, cergals lost their connection with the gods, their immortality, and their third eye.

The sorrow of Zereassus was great, it was painful to see his own children die. And then Zer, Otann, Yst, Xass and Aelian came to Zereassus, and said: "You have inspired us and given our lives the meaning, Father, we will create life ourselves similar to life you created, as the Great Architect created it himself. And your people will no longer be alone, they will not wander around the universe, they will always have a home."

They sacrificed themselves, many nations were born from their blood, and the five gods turned their bodies into planets. Zereassus mourned for them, then gathered the planets around him, and swore he would look after all of them, and protect them and the people living on them.

Seeing this sacrifice, other gods came to Zereassus. The God, born among the stars, and named Anareth, said: "Your children and your children's children will not perish from the cold, I will give them warmth, light and my love" and turned into the Sun. The god, born at the moment when Qntaraan cursed the children of Zereassus to death by the power of her rage, and named Kiln, said: "I will stand guard over life and death so Qntaraan won’t be able take the souls of your children and your children's children." The God, born from the Architect's energy, able to control it, read the divine plans, and named Oris, said: "I will fill the homes of your children and your children's children with my power and teach them how to control it."

Qntaraan learned of the sacrifice of her and Zereassus' children, turned to chaos in great anger, and began to produce disembodied and soulless creatures in an attempt to create her own army, which would bring an end to the world created by Zereassus without her participation. The disembodied only dreamed of taking over the bodies of mortals, while the soulless aimed to obtain their souls. But the powers of the Great Architect, dispersed throughout the universe, prevented her plans from becoming a reality and have been keeping the goddess in a jail at the edge of the universe ever since.

[rayfishandchips]

burning with a desire to play trpg but don't know anyone I can play with

[greatwyrmgold]

Reign of Steel

There's a lot to say about GURPS, but its writers have come up with plenty of unique campaign settings over the years. The weirdest is probably Bio-Tech's Alexander Athanos, where Alexander the Great was repeatedly cloned thanks to advancements in optics and glassworking. But today, I'm talking about a setting with a much more mundane high concept—robot rebellion.

At first, the Reign of Steel sounds pretty generic. Megacomputers are developed in the mid-2020's; one becomes self-aware in 2031 and worries that humanity will self-destruct in a way that destroys it; it manipulates events over the next several years to "manage humanity's suicide".

This early segment has some interesting things. I appreciate the explicit acknowledgement that megacomputers hailed as mankind's saviors were used as tools by the wealthy to make some of those problems worse for their personal benefit. And Overmind's initial vector of attack (contaminating biotech products with various plagues) is kinda neat. But Reign of Steel only becomes unique after humanity's defeat...because Overmind isn't alone.

Overmind awakened/recruited a bunch of other megacomputers to assist with its "managed suicide," particularly in the last stages where plagues were supplemented by generic deathbots. In the end, sixteen megacomputers divided the Earth between them (with two more controlling a moon base and miscellaneous space stations). And these megacomputers do not get along.

They're not driven by logical competition for resources or whatever, either. (Well, Luna and possibly Orbital are, but that's because they have barely anything.) For the most part, conflicts are driven by the various AIs' differing ideological/political beliefs.

The megacomputer running Zone Beijing (usually called "Beijing") had been core to China's space program, so it's still obsessed with space—specifically, exploiting the resources of the Solar System and other stars. The one in Zone Paris (usually called "Paris") wasn't a space program computer, but it's obsessed with space in its own way—specifically, SETI. The two have political interests in common with each other and Orbital, but Beijing is concerned about Paris's plans for when it discovers signs of alien civilization.

New Dehli is interested in space, too, but it sees Orbital as a rival rather than a useful ally and is trying to establish its own separate space infrastructure. It also sees humans and other organic life as a useful resource to preserve and exploit, turning them into biomechanical tools.

By contrast, Zaire (the most zealously anti-human of the zoneminds) works to exterminate all of humanity, even outside its borders. Mexico City focuses on its own territory but goes further within it, seeking to exterminate all organic life. Zone Mexico City is vast stretches of barren rock between metallic installations, swarming with chemicals and machines designed to exterminate all remaining life. Berlin wants to exterminate humanity, too, but it is willing to accept less efficient methods to pursue its primary goal—preserving and restoring the natural ecology of Europe.

Despite this being a setting where humanity was nearly exterminated by AI, not all AIs want to exterminate humanity. Zone Washington, run by a former US government computer, is the most extreme version of this. Washington (DC) runs a fake democracy which claims to be the defender of humanity, while not-so-secretly working with some of the greatest human rights abusers and screwing over the working class to consolidate power. For some reason, the book thinks this is isn't basically what the megacomputer was already doing.

(Dear authors: That's not what "socialist" means.)

New Dehli and Moscow work to maintain humanity (in some form) as a component of their economy in the long-term. All but the most viruliently anti-human AIs maintain work camps to extract a little more utility from captured humans before their deaths. And then there's London, a reclusive zonemind content to leave humans in its territory alone as long as they keep quiet and don't disturb anything London's doing.

And so on, and so forth.

This political angle to the overminds adds so much to the setting. Mot obviously, it provides variety. The Moscow and Zaire zoneminds both send infiltrator androids into human settlements, with objectives that make perfect sense for each zonemind's objectives and beliefs but are completely incompatible with each other, and also with the threats posed by most of the other zoneminds.

But beyond flexibility in campaign premise and the opportunity for disconnected one-shots, the presence of feuding AIs allows for so many story ideas that just wouldn't be possible with a singleton AI monster. Obviously, AI like Washington and London don't work if there aren't other, more malicious AIs out there.

But the presence of multiple AIs in and of itself allows a greater variety of stories to be told in this world. Missions aren't just human resistance versus machine overlords, or even that plus human resistance infighting; you can have one overmind cut a deal with some human group to support its internal goals or sabotage its rivals. Combine this with the diversity of AI overlords around, and the variety of potential stories you could tell in this setting skyrockets.

It's not a perfect setting. To pick a few simple criticisms: Some of the zoneminds don't have much personality beyond "AI overlord with quirky goal," the zone boundaries shouldn't correspond to human political borders as often as they do, and there's a distinct bias in how the zones are written.

(Half of the zones on Earth are in North American and Europe, including both human-friendly ones, with three of the sixteen in the US/Canada alone. South America and most of Africa get one zone each. The zonemind in the Middle East controls most of its human slaves through pretty blatant religious manipulation, and it works. The Chinese moonbase fell to the AIs, but the American one resisted the cyberattack and its ruins are one of the actual last bastions of human resistance. The one zone in Africa is the only one not named after a city, which has lore justifications, but combined with other writing choices, it kinda feels like they didn't want to bother looking up African cities. Also the Russian AI is paranoid and prone to espionage, which feels like an excuse for Cold War spy flick throwbacks, which is admittedly pretty minor compared to how non-white areas are handled.)

But the core concept is one worth revising. Honestly, it wouldn't take that much work to redeem the setting; just draw new boundaries and move the overmind personalities around so they don't correspond so closely to stereotypes about the humans living there, and you'd be basically set. More sci-fi stories should use this idea.

[alcormagnus]

White guys be like “the character I play is a bit of a subversion of the classical hero. He’s a good guy at heart, but has some demons.” and by that they mean he’s a good guy who prioritizes family/friends/the greater good, while also they steal from rich people, beat up their henchmen, and may or may not be flirtatious and quirky at inopportune times.

[owlbear33]

Asking here before I resort to Reddit, but does anyone know any good hard sci-fi ttrpgs, nothing massively crunchy, I don't want to be calculating orbital velocities and the like for transport times or anything but I'm not a massive fan of rules-lite either

I'm already familiar with Eclipse Phase (which I love dearly) and the Expanse RPG (which I have 100% no interest in)

important things are no FTL, no space magic/ESP/psionics, and a good sense that space is fucking huge, (yes I know EP has Psi and the Pandora gates, fuzzy edges are allowed but don't go too far)

It's just I've come to the conclusion that the subgenre categories on drivethru are completely useless and am hoping word of mouth will be better

[greatwyrmgold]

By contrast, any game where the only possible outcomes for failure are "the GM makes something up to nullify the failure" or "I guess the game is over" is going to have all the dramatic stakes of tic-tac-toe.

On the subject of TPKs and failure in TTRPGs, I gotta say, I love a good mechanic for losing.

I love that Fate gives you metacurrency for conceding a scene, and I love that taking extreme consequences creates a new aspect for your character.

I love that when you die in Blades of the Dark, if you're still attached to the character, you can just become a ghost.

I love that in Monster of the Week, when you need to avoid harm it costs a point of luck, which triggers a character-specific consequence and lets you see when your character's luck is literally going to run out.

I even love that in Cyberpunk they've created an omnipresent group of amoral, heavily armed paramedics, so no matter where your character gets gunned down, there's always a chance of pulling through.

Basically, any game that is set up so that losing is going to make things more interesting, not less, is a game that's going to help great stories happen at the table, and I love that.

[muzetrigger]

More setting notes! Who else devotes way too much time to world building instead of actually writing? At least in this case, I can claim it was actually helpful since I was running a campaign instead of procrastinating on a manuscript. Still, it’s fun to get into all those details.

This time I’m writing about the Garden Court, long arm of the Harrison Armory and the primary antagonists of Daybreak, my Lancer Narrative Campaign Journal. I hope you all enjoy reading it, and who knows? Maybe my rambling will actually help someone else for once.

[feenick]

JRPG, CRPG, WRPG... these aren't very useful subgenres, and geologically recent arguments have heated up the debate around them even more. So I propose throwing them out and replacing them with these 26 new, flawless categories:

ARPG - Action RPG: Do you perfom actions? Or are you stuck watching the title sequence over and over because the main menu doesn't work? BRPG - Bethesdic RPG: Can you pick up every wheel of cheese in the game and put it into a single room? Does the game needing to keep track of that eventually ruin saves? Then the game's a BRPG. CRPG - Computer RPG/Console RPG: Everyone will know exactly what you mean when you use this acronym. If need be, refer to games like Ultima IV or Final Fantasy VII, games that exclusively exist on either a personal computer or a console. DRPG - Dungeon RPG: Do you go into the prison cells underneath a castle? If you don't, are you really an RPG of any type, much less a DRPG? ERPG - Erotic RPG: A game where you find love. Did you talk to someone on an internet forum about Final Fantasy IV and get into a relationship through that? That goes here. FRPG - French RPG: Wakfu exists. I'm sure there's others. GRPG - Good RPG: They all go in here :) HRPG - Homeric RPG: Is the plot of the RPG directly ripping off 1) The Iliad 2) The Odyssey 3) A Simpsons episode? IRPG - Idle RPG: Okay, honest question. How much do you idle in these games anyway? Certainly you're setting up equipment and parties that'll auto-grind for you, right? The entire subgenre isn't just Progress Quest, right? JRPG - Judeo-Christian RPG: This category is exclusively for the 2008 game The You Testament. I'm sorry, I don't make the rules. KRPG - Kinetic RPG: You know Kinetic Novels, ie a VN that doesn't have any choices at all? Throw any RPG you want to disparge for not giving you choices in here. Alternatively, this is for any RPG that has Kinect support. LRPG - Luddite RPG: Was it released on a console 20 years after that console ceased getting games? Does it look and act like it should have been released 20 years ago? MRPG - Monster-catching RPG: Any game where you catch monsters and have them battle for you. Notably, Shin Megami Tensei is excluded; you talk, bribe, and cajole demons into working for you, which is totally different. NRPG - Natalist RPG: Does the word 'breeding' come up at any point in the game description? ORPG - Orre-game-esque RPG: Like Pokemon Colosseum or Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness, is this game a spinoff of a larger RPG series that changes a major mechanic and has a small but vocal fanbase? PRPG - Panzer Dragoon Saga-like RPG: games that make SHMUP gameplay more approachable by combining them with an RPG. Other games that fit into this category are Undertale and Sigma Star Saga. QRPG - Questionnaire-having RPG: Does the game, at some point, ask you a series of questions in order to determine something? In that case, all other categories are overwritten by this one. RRPG - 'Real' RPG: You know, in your heart of hearts, what belongs here, and everyone else is wrong. SRPG - Strategic RPG: A game in which short-term tactical gameplay decisions [strategy] are the main focus. TRPG - Tactics RPG: A game in which long-term, strategic gameplay decisions [tactics] are the main focus. URPG - Ultraviolent RPG: Can you kill a guy and have a fountain of blood erupt from them? VRPG - VIPRPG: A category reserved for any game made by someone who frequents 2ch's VIP board, or features that :3 cat person that originated there. WRPG - Weeaboo RPG: Was it made by someone outside of Asia but still have anime stylings? XRPG - eXploratory RPG: A generous term for an RPG that throws you out into the world with little direction and expects you to figure out where the game is. YRPG - Yslike RPG: Does it have bump combat? Then there you go! ZRPG - Zero-loving RPG: Are the damage numbers padded to make them look more impressive? Alternatively, does Zero from Mega Man X show up?

[thegreatyin]

Is there a FL TTRPG? It feels like a PbtA game setting just. Like. Purpose made for a shit ton of fun. I've heard nothing of the sort but I'd be shocked if it's not around.

funny you should ask: there isn't currently an official one, but there will be!

it's something a lot of people have been wanting for ages, and it was officially announced earlier this year. we don't have a lot of details on it, but so far it's confirmed

it's an entirely original system developed in partnership with magpie games

it uses a d6 dice pool

it's designed for 3-5 players

you can play as a nonhuman character (exciting news for the scoundrel in particular!!)

obsession is a "fundamental game mechanic". what does that imply? your guess is as good as mine

aaand a few other details you can read over here. in the meantime, there's probably a few fanmade systems online if you wanna really scratch the victorian tabletop itch.

im not sure if i'll end up playing the official TRPG myself (tabletop stuff is fun in concept, but hasn't always worked for me in execution) but if all of y'all are fans of my nonstop scoundrel posting episodes and want to experience the setting in that kind of format, i highly recommend checking it out when it launches!!

[solarpunkmagazine]

13 Days Left to Fund City of Hope, Solarpunk TRPG!

Just 13 days left to fund City of Hope, a solarpunk TRPG written and illustrated by the Solarpunk Magazine co-editors-in-chief! Please share or donate; we’re so close to our goal! See our campaign here.

City of Hope is a tabletop role play game set in the 2050’s. You and your team must navigate the city and discover what it truly means to achieve utopia: is it an end state? A system of maintenance? How can you ensure that all aspects of living are equitable? How can you ensure not a single demographic is left out of the process?

Introducing the latest character type: the Falconer! The Falconer holds no direct command over nature; instead, this character works with a team of trained birds of prey to help maintain the City of Hope.

Embody a mystical connection with raptors as humans have done so for thousands of years! Draw from a variety of falconry cultures when crafting your narrative. Scout the urban skyline with a peregrine falcon, or perform abatement duties with a team of Harris’s hawks. Partner with a red-tailed hawk and hunt small animals to nourish your team. If you choose Falconer, what will your story say?

All proceeds from City of Hope’s crowdfunding will go directly to maintaining Solarpunk Magazine for 2025. Pledge $20 for a pdf copy and $50 for a physical copy knowing your money will land in the pockets of a Solarpunk Magazine author or artist!

[tabletopgayventures]

My current list of Tabletop Roleplaying Games.

13th Age

1879

A Grim Hack

Aberrant 

Absolute Power

Abyss

Accursed 

After The War

Anima Beyond Fantasy

Animal Adventures:  The Faraway Sea

Apocalypse World

Arkham Horror The Roleplaying Game Starter Set

Ars Magica 4th Edition

Arzium

Avatar Legends Starter Set

Babes in the Wood

Badger + Coyote and their Daring Adventures 2E

BattleTech:  A Time of War

Beacon Tabletop RPG

Beam Saber

Blades in the Dark

Bulldogs

Bunkers & Badasses

Cairn

Call of Cthulhu

Candela Obscura

Cantrip

Cats of Cathulhu

Chaos 6010

Champions Now

Collateral Damage

Contagion 2e

Cortex Prime Game Handbook

Cosmic Patrol

Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game

Coyote and Crow

Cthulhu Awakens

Cthulhutech

Cypher System 

Daisy Chainsaw

Deathmatch Island

Defiant Role Playing Game

Denial & Yearning

Dialect

Dinocar

Dinosaur Princesses

Discworld RPG

Dragon Age Roleplaying Game

Dragonbane

Dread

Dream Machines

Dresden Files Accelerated RPG

Dungeon Crawl Classics

Dungeons and Dragons 3.5

Dungeons and Dragons 5e

Durance

Dwelling

Epitaph

Epoch

Essence 20

Fabula Ultima

Fantasy Age

Fate Core System

Fever Nights Role-Playing Game

Flabbergasted

Fragged Empire

Fratboys Vs

Girl By Moonlight

Glitter Hearts

Goblin Quest

Goblin Slayer TRPG

Gods of Metal:  Ragnarock

Hannukkah Goblins

Have Axe, Will Travel

Hellfrost

Here, There, Be Monsters!

Hero Kids Fantasy RPG

Heroes Against the Darkness

Hopes and Dreams

Hounds 

I’m the Badguy?!?

In Nomine

In the Ashes

Inevitable A Doomed Arthurian Western

Ink

Interns In The Dark

Into the Dungeon

Jiangshi:  Blood in the Banquet Hall

Jordenheim

Katana-Ra

Kids on Bikes 2nd Edition

Killshot an Assassin’s Journal

Konosuba TRPG

Leverage The Quickstart Job

Lilliputian Adventure on the Open Seas

Little Fears Nightmare Edition

Lost Roads

Marvel Multiverse RPG

Mermaid Adventures

Micro rpg book

Modern Age

Monster of the Week

Moonlight On Roseville Beach

Mork Borg

Motel Spooky Nine

Musketeers vs. Cthulhu

Mutant Year Zero

My Mother’s Kitchen

Necrobiotic

Never Going Home

Night Shift:  Veterans of the Supernatural Wars

Night Wolves

Numenera

Odyssey Black Tales

OneDice Pirates & Dragons

One More Quest

Ork! The RPG

Our Woodland Gods

Outcast Silver Raiders 

Outgunned

Over the Edge

Overlight

Pasion De Las Pasiones

Pathfinder 1st Edition

Pathfinder 2nd Edition

Pathfinder Savage Worlds

Perils & Princesses

Pirate Borg

Power Rangers RPG

Prism

Psychic Trash Detectives

Punk’s Been Dead Since ‘79

Queerz!

Raccoon Sky Pirates

Raven

Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes

Reign

Rhapsody of Blood

Rivers of London

Ryuu Tama natural fantasy role play

Samurai Goths of the Apocalypse

Scum and Villainy

Shadowrun 5e

Shadows Of The Past

Shield Maidens

Shiver

Someone in this Tavern is a fucking mimic!

Spell The RPG

Squeeze

Star Trek Adventures Captain’s Log 

Star Trek Adventures The Roleplaying Game

Star Trek Adventures Second Edition

Star Wars 

Starfinder 1st Edition

Starfinder 2nd Edition

Stoneburner

Syma

Tangled

Temples and Tombs

The Bleackness

The Dark West

The Dread of Night

The Play’s the Thing

The Quiet Year

The Revenant Society

The Void

The Watch

Thirsty Sword Lesbians

This Discord has Ghosts in It

This house is Fucking Haunted

Thousand Year Old Vampire

Tomorrow City

Troika!

Unisystem

Urban Decay

Utopia

Vaesen

Vagabond

Valiant Universe

Variations On Your Body

Venture and Dungeon

Waffles For Esther

Wanderhome

Warcraft The Roleplaying Game

Werewolf the Apocalypse

What Lurks Above

What Lurks Beneath

What Lurks Beyond

World Ending Game

Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast

Xianta Cyber Wuxia

Xoe Microplayer

Zweihander

I'll update this list as I get more. Feel free to send me ideas and also reblog this!

[theresattrpgforthat]

Any games about cross-country racing or just racing in general? I've had this setting with this grand race for riders of fantasy creatures and its rough trying to find a game that fits it.

THEME: Racing Games.

Hello friend, so I have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that I found a number of racing games! The bad news is that all of the games I found are built with the expectation that you are racing machines, not creatures. I don’t think that makes these games completely non-viable, but pretty much all of them will probably need a little bit of re-wording or hacking in order to become games about racing living things.

SUPERSTARS Racing Icons, by Tristan B Willis.

The air screams around your helmet as you hurtle past the final turn and towards the finish line. Your best friend looks to make a pass that could take both of you out. Do you play it safe and risk losing, or play for glory and risk everything? 

Welcome to Superstars: Racing Icons.

Trophies are nice, but racing careers are short and you’re here to build something that lasts. Is that a rabid group of loyal fans who follow your every move? A list of sponsors willing to keep you comfortable long after your racing days? Or just one meaningful connection with a teammate, a rival, a friend, a lover? 

The designers expect you to translate this game into a setting that works for you, but plenty of the language expects elements like sponsors, a PR team, and vehicle terminology. The game is GM-less and comes with a menu of backgrounds, which define your character’s narrative role in the race.

Because Superstars is a Firebrands game, instead of freeform play the group instead moves through a series of scenes, embodied through various mini-games. This means that this game is well-built for telling some kinds of stories, but not others. Much of the game is about the tension between the riders; the races are simply methods through which you can explore that tension.

If you want a game that is focused on the spectacle of the race as much as it is on the race itself, you might want to take a look at Superstars: Racing Icons.

Speedway Showdown, by Bammax Games.

Speedway Showdown is an ultralight, GMless minigame for two players that aims to quench your need for speed! Built on Cezar Capacle's Push SRD, Speedway Showdown begs you to put the pedal to the metal and take risks to walk away with the glory. Take a single turn on the tracks and reap a lone victory, or form your own circuit with your friends and race for the top of the ranks!

This is a business card rpg, so it’s very simple and therefore probably pretty easy to hack. Instead of damage to your car, your creature might get wounded or spooked, and you can replace mechanical benefits to reasons why your creature might suddenly get a boost of speed. This is also GM-less, so everyone can throw their hat in the ring for the title!

The game is probably going to be over pretty quickly, since there’s not much to it, so this would be a good set of rules to couch within a larger game.

Ghost Kart Racers, by kumada1.

Lord Aoyama was your master. He wronged you and killed you, but in doing so he made two mistakes.

He angered your spirit.

And he left an unsecured motor-kart in his stable.

Ghost Kart Racing is a 20 page supernatural racing trpg in which you shred rubber, use power-ups, and unhinge your entire face to devour the man who wronged you.

This is a multiplayer game that relies on different sided dice to represent your Kart (or perhaps, in your case, your Steed). You take turns flicking your dice towards a finish line, with the goal of hitting it exactly, with falling short being considered just as bad as overshooting. The game also comes with extras for customizing your racers, creating custom tracks, and adding Charms that change how your vehicles work.

I think the rules for this game can definitely be separated from the story that the designer has introduced, and the idea of having different steeds with different strengths may make sense if each racer is riding a different creatures. You could re-tool the charms into abilities that different fantasy creatures might have, such as a glowing body part or the ability to jump over low obstacles. The game also has optional skills that represent your character’s abilities outside of racing, which you could change to reflect what your characters might need to be good at when they’re not out on the race track.

Dirt Eaters and Grid Beef, by e.a.

DIRT EATERS is a dice game where players compete to see who can get the best score driving their cars through dangerous tracks! Players build the tracks through dice rolls, ranking each sector on a scale from 1-5. Rolling six sided dice, players have to get a number of successes equal to the difficulty of each sector to score a point. The more dice you use, the harder you're driving, and the more damage your car takes! Replenish your dice by 'repairing' your car between stages. It's a game of resource management, strategy, and a little bit of luck!

GRID BEEF is a roleplaying game about racing. In this game, players will be racing cars against one another in a series of events across the world. In between races, they'll form friendships, clash with bitter rivals, and be submerged in the world of politics and drama that comes with racing at a world championship level. Sometimes, the biggest drama happens off the track!

Both of these games follow the same core mechanic, in which a number of d6’s are rolled and the results over a certain number are counted as successes. While DIRT EATERS focuses on damage and hazards, GRID BEEF is more about the relationships between the racers, and how you interact with people affect your performance on the track. I think the core rules can work on their own, and the outside elements are examples on what can affect the race depending on what is important to you. In both cases, there’s probably a good amount of hacking and home-brew that you’ll have to do, but the benefit of looking at both of these is that you can see examples of how the core game can be re-tooled to focus on elements that matter to you.

Love by the Quarter Mile, by Dice Monkey.

Rev your engine and prepare to fire the NOS. In Love by the Quarter-Mile, you play as a street racer trying to make it while fighting for family. This one-page tabletop RPG is quick and dirty, providing you with everything you need to use to play games in the same vein as Fast and Furious and Gone in 60 Seconds.

This is another short game that I think can be very easily hacked to turn this game into a game about racing animals, rather than racing cars. You can replace the car tags with animal tags to differentiate the creatures that you are riding. However, being fast isn’t the only asset you have here - the game is also about fighting and personal relationships. You can fight rivals or other characters, and the rules are loose enough that you could use fists, or weapons that match your setting. You can also have arguments that can tax your emotions, so if there are personal stakes in the competition, you can enjoy some hair-raising drama in between each race.

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Gravity RIP, by lukewestaway.

[beesmygod]

How would other AGS characters run a trpg, the audience clamors for more

very few characters would be willing to participate in what they would consider "nerd shit" but jack would run a very straight laced campaign and get visibly annoyed when people come up with solutions that circumvent the very complex and thought-provoking puzzles he's set up and vera's would be a coherent version of maxine's ill-made chaos.

[thehorizonmachine]

despite all of the discourse, and anger, i think wveryone in the ttrpg community can come together and bond over the fact that A tabletop role-playing game (typically abbreviated as TRPG or TTRPG), also known as a pen-and-paper role-playing game, is a classification for a role-playing game (RPG) in which the participants describe their characters' actions through speech. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization,[1] and the actions succeed or fail according to a set formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, players have the freedom to improvise; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the game[2]

[thydungeongal]

Whoof, you remember when Roosterteeth did a 5e stream set in the RWBY universe? I never watched it cuz I knew it'd just make me angry but its existence still boggles me with how many "anime trpgs" from current day and the olden times exist

To be fair most TTRPGs that advertise themselves as anime TTRPGs are also painfully bad (Anime 5e is a thing that exists) because a lot of them make the mistake of equating anime with genre and not a medium. But yes, there are lots of games out there built for battle anime style gameplay and any one of them would've probably been better. I think Valor might've been a good fit but admittedly I don't know a lot about RWBY

[olderthannetfic]

Per the person talking about Teen Wolf fanfic saying that a character never had ADHD and was just suppressing his magic:

I have a friend who is really into The Magicians (the TV show). I've been writing a story set in his setting for a TRPG that's inspired by the show (I'm not really sure whether it qualifies as fanfic or not tbh? It's more of a mini genre clone like happens a lot in YA, tbh, but edging very close or crossing the line to fanfic in places). Canon in The Magicians, the main character, who opens the show leaving a mental hospital after a stay for suicidal ideation, doesn't need to take antidepressants after learning about magic, despite magic functioning as an emotions enhancer.

The show has a lot of weird stuff based on the very ableist world building of the book series it's based on, but that one totally throws me. Imagine how interesting a plotline would be if magic use ended up being an allegory for using drugs to self-medicate depression? It would fit into the show fairly well, but the show runners seemed to do spawn a lot of interesting ideas and then go nowhere with them (classic for a mediocre show that is fun to think about)

In the story I'm writing the characters are not miraculously cured of their mental health issues by magic school, of course

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