#ttrpg development

[damsels-n-dice]

the new version of my game, 'til it kills us (v0.4), is out now! for the next two weeks, you can check out all 50 pages of my passion project for only $1, with some bonus spending goal benefits as well!

but, you might be asking, what is 'til it kills us? it's a dark urban fantasy TTRPG for 4-6 players, written, edited & playtested by yours truly. focused on themes of queer activism, mental health, and balancing your goals with your safety, it uses the buddy system to encourage players to work together. though, of course, there are also benefits for leaning into the darkest parts of your character instead.

and what's new in this updated version of the game?

the brand new cover

additional traits that add character diversity & customization

new relationships to add drama to your team dynamics

new home base features to expand your team's headquarters

a system for setting task difficulty

increased risk of complications, misfortune & other shenanigans

and much, much more!

so again, if you want to get this new version (and all future versions) of 'til it kills us for only $1, and earn some bonus content for the game, you can check it out at the top of this post, or at the link below:

[the-princeps]

Irregulars ttrpg, intro

Irregulars is now on itch:

The year 1960 was a tumultuous time one era passing and another one growing. In this time of strife one group was either unseen or hunted, the Irregulars. Unknown to most of their fellow mortals and hunted by a strange government agency known as the Red Eye they survive with what they can. With foes or fools at all corners and no one and nothing left to help them, they now steal for food and for their own desires. They were alone, alone with their other Irregulars and no one could truly stay disciplined for long in their circumstances. So they feast and give into their own hedonism. A single group rarely changes the course of history and so why bother, enjoy freedom and debauchery, it is the cure to all ailments.

The Irregulars ttrpg features explicit guides for adventure design and setting up the large heists and thefts by which Irregulars live and a veritable suite of tools for the GM to use. For the players it also features a great deal of options to customize your supernatural character, will it be an esoteric stranger, invoking the powers of fear itself against humans, or someone who's instincts on what the weakness' of the mortal emotion are, never betrayed them.

this is the Irregulars ttrpg, which is now published on itch.io: https://the-royal-prince-princeps.itch.io/irregulars-a-ttrpg-about-survival-and-debauchery and will be up on drivethrurpg soon.

[20clawzstudios]

For the record of the Tumblr, let it be known that Shattered Neon is a Furry Game in the sense we got anthros and you can play as them in the game. That being said, I do still think I want to design a truly Bespoke Furry TTRPG at some point. One that really focuses specifically on anthro characters and their struggles/lives/cultures. Shattered Neon has Anthros in it because Human Culture has anthros and is just filled with furries.

[ghostofcinders]

They Came from the Cyclops's Cave!

The first game I've ever pitched and developed is out!

They Came from the Cyclops's Cave! is a game of fantasy cinematic adventure. Part of the They Came From series by Onyx Path Publishing, Cyclops's Cave is completely standalone, an awesome game covering fantasy in all its shapes.

Each They Came From is a love letter to a given movie/media genre zeitgeist, and I pitched Cyclops's Cave to be unique and do the whole fantasy genre. It allows to play from Harryhausen movies to The Lord of the Rings, passing through Xena, Ladyhawke, He-Man, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, The Black Cauldron, and Dragonheart.

Seriously, I can't overstate how much range this game has. Like, it *technically* covers TV shows and movies from the 40s to the 90s, but I am who I am, so you'll find nods to Adventure Time, Zelda, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and many more in here. Of course you will, this game's my baby, and I wanted it to commit to fantasy at its fullest.

Here you'll find:

- Tools to create your own heroes, be them warriors, gorgons, pixies, slimes, or mimics

- Cinematic powers that replicate movie beats.

- A vast collection of antagonists and creatures.

- Two ready-made scenarios.

...and much more!

Seriously, I love They Came From, how it combines comedy and devotion to media at the table through honest love. This baby of mine is the result of so much hard work, done by a team of awesome people who poured their love for the project into all pages.

Please consider checking it out! That would mean the world to me.

(Also: Cyclops's Cave is the foundation for the upcoming They Came From Witchford Academy!, its very cool upcoming Magical School supplement!)

[mystybelle]

From last night's stream-

I don't think RPGs have anything to do with stats.

I think an RPG, or whether or not a game counts as one, is more about how you can affect it's world or environment beyond just winning or losing.

Like, Skyrim and space Skyrim, for example,are not RPGs. They are a very shoddily made, medieval & sci-fi themed amusement parks.

But neither are any Final Fantasy games, Legend of Zelda games, Shadow of Mordor, the Assassin's Creed series, Genshin Impact, God of War (any of them, even the new ones), Kingdom Hearts (any of them), Diablo, Transistor, or any Pokemon games. These are lovingly crafted roller coasters with various themes, with different additional genres of games therein, unlike most Bethesda games, but not roleplaying games. They're gripping movies, comics, art exhibits, and dioramas with well done and utilitarian world-building.

Or visual novels. And that's not me disparaging these games, just hopefully pushing our evolving language for discussing games in a better direction?

I guess the next question is probably- "What is an RPG by your call then?"

I'd say games like the original Deus Ex, Stardew Valley, Fallout 1&2, Undertale, Pathologic, literally every single Animal Crossing game, Pathfinder/DnD (if your DM has a stable sleep schedule), and Shadow the Hedgehog.

The difference between these two groups is:

group A: Interactive media (games) that are stories, or Games(under the cut), with worlds that only exist to tell their stories or for the player's convenience.

group B: Interactive media that is a world the player is encouraged to interact with as a consistent Character within, or where the player's avatar & actions exists as a character within the world and not just an artifice of design or play.

There is nothing you can do on Final Fantasy VII's Gaea that will impact any part of the rest of the world, besides succeed at a given challenge or die and have another go. Nor in X, IX, or VIII. Locking a world's keyhole in Kingdom Hearts 1 doesn't change the game's state it's the next part of the story and the success state that follows defeating most level's final bosses (or after figuring out a clever puzzle in Traverse Town). Riku can't fail to save Sora at the end of Kingdom Hearts II, you fail to rescue Riku's man, and the game lets you try again until you catch up with canon. Transistor does not care whether you collect certain programs/citizens, the Process [REDACTED] no matter what. Zelda can't not be rescued in any of the series' games where she appears; there are no ways to save the land of Termina except by assisting its citizens in a very specific order. In Pokemon, Team Rocket cannot successfully kidnapp someone's Pokemon on screen, and Team Aqua cannot successfully flood the world.

But in Shadow the Hedgehog; the president can be spared and his life determines how the rest of the game's story plays out; you can steadily work to destroy the world with the Black Arms and feel the progress of the invasion as you complete more of their missions. In Pathologic, failing to cure a patient doesn't send you to a game over screen, the patient just dies. Sometimes your patient is important to you and their death will have disastrous consequences, sometimes not. In ACNH, everything you can do changes the game's state in a meaningful way, there are almost literally no meaningless actions you can take in that game (or any animal crossing game). In a solid Pathfinder/DnD game, unless your party fights and dies to the last man, failing to kill the Lich or Evil king means that they get to take over that town or city. Some tables don't even run TPKs back, that specific world just gets worse and you either abandon it to its fate or have to make new avatars to re-enter a world that's likely grown more hostile because of the failure. In the original Fallouts, the only real "game over" fail state in those games is dying. Everything else is simply a choice to make, or a consequence to avoid. Likewise in the original Deus Ex, JC Denton's actions decide whether the [REDACTED it's old but go play the game] play out as planned, whether [seriously go play it] live or if the [please, you won't regret it] get their way. Each potential reality in these games, doesn't meaning you just lose, but that you now have to account for new circumstances in the world of your own making.

I don't think a game doesn't become an RPG because it has stats, or levels. Those are just conventions of the media of games as a whole. A game is more or less of an RPG based on how internally consistent and independent of the player its world is. I think our language should reflect that that too, but considering that this genre of game comes from the original pen and paper RPGs, I don't like giving the most faithful successors to their heritage a name that doesn't include the words RPG in it. I'd rather call the first group of games "Immersive Movies" and give the term "RPG" back to the second group. But if we must call both groups kinds of RPGs, I want to suggest replacing WRPG vs JRPG, with RPGs vs "VRPGs" or Virtual Ride Playing Games (or Vibe Role Playing Games), seeing as the first group is more akin to a book/movie/play/amusement park ride that you read or ride through than they are games where you meaningfully play the role of a character.

If that makes sense? Replies/rb as are welcome as comments, I had the thought on stream and I've spent all day working to make it more coherent than the babbling that usually rattles around in my brain, but I couldn't make it any shorter than this. So idk, let me know what you think. I'm eager to hear from other devs, or just players for that matter.

Also, I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH, this isn't me shitting on any game I've mentioned except for Skyrim and space Skyrim. I'm not using RPG as a title of prestige, or saying any of these games are worse than the others except for Skyrim; I'm only saying we should probably re categorize them. Roller coasters are good things when they're well made.

[maicolgoldlion]

Sunless Odyssey - Devlog 0: Lite

Here's another new project, even though we're still at the beginning of the year. This time it's a dark souls themed one-page game that I made for crystalthefool's Soul-Lite Jam.

My project turned out to be very ambitious, so I preferred to create this one-page game with the material I had finished. So here a first prototype totally free.

Collaborative worldbuilding

Exploration rules

Fiction focused Character creation

Narrative oriented combat focussed on player agency

BitD adiecent clock bases goals

If you have any feedback, it's very welcome!

[beasties-in-my-bag]

[companionwolf]

Mockups of my one page rpg jam entry.

[bekandrew]

Free Resource Downloadable

The Further Reading Section of "Operation Lavender," a trans-focused adventure for Trinity Continuum: Aberrant set in the Southern US and written by a Southern trans guy, is up on my Patreon for all members. https://www.patreon.com/posts/operation-108488268

[mystybelle]

Yeah. As far as that new way of consuming games... Mobile games are probably going to be it, while Nintendo, Sony, & MAYBE Valve will take over the console market as publishers overall. Indie studios like Supergiant will probably be fine on steam, and I know they and the rest are competent enough to manage if mobile becomes the new space.

Just Switches, Steam decks/PC, and Mobile ecosystem versions of the former two. Nintendo, demons they may be, were smart to keep a hold of the mobile/handheld space. But they carried the industry through the last crash too, so that's no real surprise.

Sure is fun watching history repeat itself in literally every aspect of human society right now, and in the most demented ways.

Unironically I think we might run into another video game crash like back in the day

[probskay]

I think there's something magical in play testing a game you have touched in a year and having a lot of the complicated balancing bits still be okay. I was really expecting worse

[the-princeps]

Tabletop design server: https://discord.gg/N3cXrnsRSh

This is a tabletop (mainly ttrpg) design server to talk about the design of ttrpgs and such.

This is a general design server, it has chats on most parts of ttrpg design, from playtesting to adventure design. The server is only very recently made so is still kind of awakening and standing up.

It is meant to incentivize genuine discussion about ttrpgs and helpful feedback far over being right.

contact info: https://discord.gg/N3cXrnsRSh

[20clawzstudios]

Looking into alternate combat mechanics outside of DnD 5e I think is one of the first major steps I would encourage TTRPG devs and GMs to do the first chance they get. So much of the hobby culture is controlled by 5th Edition, this is true, but it's also true that Dungeons and Dragons as the monolith it is has also created the default for how TTRPG culture builds combat systems. What are actions? Do you even need them?? What about initiative? Does everything need to be turn based, or is it better for actions to be declared and then happen all at once? That's also not even getting into the whole aspect of hitting others, missing, degrees of success, if criticals should even be a thing.

I think we often get caught up on expanding past the areas of 5e that have the greatest gaps, and as such we ignore combat as a crutch, which then makes whatever combat you make similar to DnD on accident. Even if you've pulled a bunch of other ideas from a bunch of other systems.

[ghostofcinders]

Still very proud I:

- Among others I felt were important to add to what the core established, made it so we added Carmilla to Aether the moment I got the chance to be a dev in The Aethernaut Collection (and thanks to her author for the great work!)

- Came up with the fake name "Millicent Karr" for her in a one-shot I ran, which is very suspect (Millicent Karr, Karr Millicent, Karr Mille, Carmilla) and thus totally on brand for Countess Mircalla "Carmilla" Von Karstein.

...I like to think I was a good fit and did good work developing for Aether books.

[mystybelle]

I'm thinking about what makes a good setting for roleplaying...

Whatever "lived in" or liveable means to you, is whatever counts. Add more in the tags or the rbs, it doesn't matter which.

+ I'm desperate for attention, but I also really want to know, so please rb for a bigger sample size?

+ Add any worlds I didn't mention that you think are more lived in too

[maicolgoldlion]

Spade and Speranza

The Valley is vast and magical, with dense forests home to spirits and fae. Silent castles and ruins sit on the mountains, while life in the few villages along the rivers is cozy and uneventful. Until, with winter came the Emissary of the Necromancer King, bringing war and destruction.

"Swords and Hope" A 200 words ttrpg Inspire by The Wheel of Time, Legend of the Seeker and The Shannara Chronicles

Players, describe your characters and tell their stories: How did you survive? Who have you lost? Why do you want to fight? The Valley is not lost, not until your swords are held with hope.

When facing danger or risking something dear, roll 1d6 and - If you're fighting prepared or if you choose to take a wound get +1 - If you're fighting Monsters or formidable Foes get -1 - Die heroically if you have 3 wounds

0- Failure with consequence 1 Failure, the Emissary draws closer. 2-3 Failure with opportunity 4-5 Success with consequence 6 Success, the Valley fights with you. 7+ Success with opportunity

GM: ask further questions, play to find out, put them in danger, call for rolls, and add details in your style. Consequences: Things get worse, New threat, Setback, Cost, or Future complication Opportunities: Let the Players propose them