#ttrpg industry

[taylorannnx]

Too Many Hats! The Burden of Indie TTRPG Design

The beauty of being in a world where making games is so accessible is that you can do it all by yourself! No need to pay others for their labour (because we don't have money but our friends/colleagues deserve to be paid!)

Just do it yourself.

Sure, the hat you wear is game designer, but layout templates range from free to cheap, so put on that layout artist hat and try your best!

Oh, but you need art, and none of the resource packs you've bought have exactly what you want, so time to make something minimalist using photos on your camera roll and photoshop I guess? Don that artist hat. You can draw some playing cards! It's easy!

Now it's time to put the game online. You've read it through and made changes, putting on the editor hat in the process. Now it's time to make a summary and all the other chores the publisher hat you just put on requires.

But who will know you've put out the game? Time for the marketing hat to go on. People do prefer infographics to threads though, so on goes a graphic design hat too.

Don't forget, you're wearing the project lead/manager hat under all those other hats!

...

It's too many hats. Games are supposed to be collaborative. Why am I wearing all of these myself?

I wish I could give these to my friends.

[sprintingowl]

I definitely understand not doing ttrpgs for financial reasons! Survive first, and you can always make art later.

If you want to get back into making ttrpgs as a passion project on the side, I'd suggest making what you're enthusiastic about, keeping production costs low, and not worrying about marketability. If a game doesn't have to do well commercially, you can focus on making it good.

It's also worth finding a group that'll play the game with you! Being part of a playtest for a friend's system and thus being part of the alchemy that goes into making that game is---for me at least---a lot of fun as a player.

Also TTRPG design kind of infamously forces people to wear a million hats, so experiment with doing layout and art and see if you can make all the pieces of the game on your own. I still can't---I draw stick figures at best---but designers who can make every part of their game are powerhouses in the indie.

Also, I was saving this for last, but I have a bit of advice that cuts against the grain of what everyone's been saying so far: make your game as big and weird and clunky and maximized as you want. You can always trim it down later.

The reason to write rpgs is that it feels fun. Don't sweat over mechanical precision or balance or that sort of thing until your game is in testing. And maybe not even then.

Done is better than perfect, and fun is better than perfect, and my best advice is to not worry too much, do what you can, and make a thing that you like.

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?

[vintagerpg]

Flip the switch to the UHF dial! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with the one, the only, Joey Royale about Weird Heroes of Public Access, coming soon in hardcover to BackerKit. Unearth strange mysteries, save your community and get it done in time to tape the next episode of your show. This is your chance to get into one of the best, coolest, most heartfelt RPGs of the decade!

[handwrittenhello]

another character from my tabletop group! (i'm really loving this DE-style portrait thing i've got going on tbh)

this is elodie, she was maximum Baby before we all Saw Some Shit

[gammaknights]

Are you into Gamma World and post-apocalyptic fantasy? Join our Tumblr Community!

[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.

[stupidsexymecha]

IMI Squamish

Boasting the title of being the second-most advanced frame in the Modern Industrial lineup after the Zephyros, the Squamish was developed in joint between, primarily, the JANUS Company and Quinn Research, with CK-I Power and the Harrier Tech Conglomerate heavily involved in the fringes of its design. While much, much more grounded than its sister frame, its utilization of abandoned “printer” technologies that Harrison left on Ilea after the first invasion give it a previously unheard of level of freedom from logistical lines, outside of pure raw material for it to process. While combat trials did not initially favor the design, its competitors faced endless setbacks after unforeseen complications with their built-in printer schema; this, combined with improvements to the Squamish’s design that overcame its initial difficulties, allowed it to glide nearly uncontested into the seat it now has in the Modern Industrial program’s arsenal.

@asdfjasklfjdkla

[makapatag]

Forgive me a moment of kahilas, but let me tell you why you'd want to play Gubat Banwa for your next Tabletop RPG Fantasy campaign (or kandu, as we call it!) instead of the other prospects out there! Long post ahead~

1: You want a fantasy setting that doesn't have a foundation in modern and western paradigms. This one is the easiest one to pitch. This is not just for those that are tired of European Medieval Fantasy: this is for those that want to look at the fantasy genre through new lens

It's one that doesn't have "adventurers" as an inherent fact of the setting. It doesn't accept "defaults". It doesn't romanticize monarchism. It is built from the ground up for tactical fights and the complicated contexts that surrounds those fights. "Combat as storytelling"

It centers us, in the Southeast Asia. So there are some things that might not be as common as in the West:

- oversea and river travel is much more common (and let's be honest, easier) than pure overland travel.

- Honor and Debt are huge parts of the game's social systems (and if you do some reading on medieval societies, aren't even unique to Southeast Asia at all!)

- There's no single dominating culture or empire: it's very diverse, and we don't use any one culture as the default

- You can adapt any Fantasy style campaign you have really, though it is a paradigmatic shift! You'll have to let go of fantasy defaults and imagine a wilder and more vibrant world

- There are no elves or orcs or whatnot--for us those are chaining things, binding things. Gubat Banwa is the wind. In fact, the closest thing we have to "humans" are strange bamboo people - Anything in normal fantasy has a fresh take: Knights wear moonstone armor and ride upon omen bird steeds, "berserkers" are holy martyrs ready to die for Goddess, sorcerers are mantra and mudra masters and utterers who have an enlightened will sharpened into a blade, archers are zen-daoists who have suffused into their surroundings and achieved minor enlightenment

2: You want a game that's specifically built around war drama and martial arts combat and the kinds of stories that entails. There's a section in the book that covers "What kinds of stories you can tell" with the GB System

These genres are the kinds of stories i love to partake in and consume: stories of wandering martial heroes, or of complicated political warring, or of grand gods and sorceries a la Ramayana, or of small stories of warriors protecting their community

dungeon delving is not even inherently against the feel of this game, though of course sacking a grave is looked down upon by most religions in the isles. they are functionally replaced by "Raids" which is much more widely applicable! You can even Raid Heaven and Hell!

3: You like complex buildcrafting, tactical combat, and martial art fiction. Instead of the classic "Hey we're a bunch of scrappy mercenaries that wield a sword out of necessity", you play as Kadungganan who inflict violence by choice, philosophy and will

"Martial Arts" here is every kind of way of inflicting violence, or of perfecting one's self. Elementalist sorcery? Combat healing? Pugilism? Mantra utterances? All martial arts in Gubat Banwa's purview.

This feeds into the buildcrafting: you start with a "Discipline" (a martial art), and each Discipline has a number of Techniques within it. Whenever your Legend Grows (level up) you gain 2 Techniques from ANY DISCIPLINE, keeping in mind prerequisites

This has led to some genuinely flavorful builds: like a priest from beyond the dead crocodile rider, a sniper that launches stolen demon seeds, a folk healer who practices flower necromancy and swordmancy, and even a Knight-Monk that is constantly dancing between stances

All of this is built upon a tactical combat system that (similarly to PF2e!) has three actions as a base, and you can do anything with those three "Beats", lending to the martial arts fiction being invoked

And you start off with pretty limited options, so most of your build is pretty emergent: creating a Kadungganan is easy, since you can't choose from a huge pool of options, but advancement is exponential

It's all on a tactical grid too that has important considerations such as Elevation, Terrain, and even Weather! All to create slick wuxia-esque scenes!

4: You want an endlessly iterative setting. Gubat Banwa is a trichiliocosm, which means it has three-billion worlds. Each one might have your table's version of the Sword Isles. The Sword Isles is a gigantic archipelago, too many islands too count, too many kingdoms to track.

Everything you can think of will fit into the islands of the Sword Isles, just know that it centers Southeast Asian paradigms. A wandering adventurer from a far off land will be the exception, the norm. But endlessly interesting cultures and campaigns can arise from the Isles

And so much more. If you're already interested, take a gander at our itch page:

Also we have a discord where i run games back to back like a goblin: https://discord.gg/8h7ZrU6353

[gridshock]

The QuickStart for Terminal State, our corporate dystopia #cyberpunk #ttrpg using Free League's Year Zero Engine, is available now on itch and DriveThruRPG.

https://vx2games.itch.io/terminal-state-quickstart

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/457568

[the-ampersand]

About sandbox campaigns

Let me tell you a story.

Last year I went to a big sci-fi/fantasy con in my country. I had been planning to go for years because there is a big emphasis in talks with authors and there were many relating to ttrpg topics. There was one about sandbox campaigns! I was excited!

But sadly, I left many of the talks very disappointed. The one that hurt me the most was, precisely, the one about sandboxes. In it, a national expert in the ttrpg industry explained how there are two (2) kinds of sandbox campaigns, either open world or "social". Maybe three if you also count urban campaigns as sandboxes.

"Ok," I thought "I completely disagree, but let's see where this goes".

Then, the speaker proceeded to explain her prep process. In a social campaign she firts creates the factions. She likes Legend of the Five Rings a lot, so she usually uses the five usual clans of the settings.

"Alright. That's reasonable".

Then, she proceeds to populate their factions with about seven to ten NPCs per faction.

I left at that very instant absolutely astounded.

In my personal opinion, sandbox campaigns don't need to be an exercise of immense prep from the GM. They can be and if it works for some people I am glad for them and I hope they have fun with that prep. But I don't think that's a really reasonable way to manage this kind of campaign for the majority of GMs and even less so for the majority of tables. (And giving a talk about it without properly disclaiming it can set up an impossible standard that might discourage many novice GMs that would consider sandbox campaigns as too labor intensive).

I believe sandbox campaigns should play with the interest of the players. As a GM one should set up an interesting backdrop to explore and interact with, with a varying degree of prep according to one's own interests. And then the players are the ones that will guide the prep needed for the next session by stating their intentions. I have seen several people here clamouring for the many benefits of asking one's players "So what's your plan for the next session, then?". And I think those benefits double when playing a sandbox campaign!

It allows for a true feeling of discovery, not only for the players, but for the GM as well! The GM doesn't need to know everything from the beginning, they can discover it in a fractal way, following the interests of the table (which includes the GM themselves, let's not forget that).

Let me give you an example.

I am currently starting a sandbox campaign based on Skerples' Magical Industrial Revolution. I am mashing it into my DIE campaign, but that's not important. This setting revolves around technology and the grave danger it poses when left unatended to the whims of idealistic inventors and shrewd investors looking to make a fortune. I did as much prep as I wanted:

Being a urban setting, I made small sheets for different neighborhoods and points of interest of the city. I also got the help of my players to do this with a small session of i'm sorry did you say street magic by Caro Asercion.

I set up small scenes to present to the players the different pre-apocalyptic inventions that will destroy the city if left unchecked. (And I added a ninth invention for DIE reasons even though that breaks the number 8 theme in the module)

And that's that! We are already three sessions in and we had an impromptu heist into the university, spent a day selling turnips in the market and met a guy who knows he is inside a narrative (DIE stuff). Next time we are going to attend to a flying machines engineering duel because that's what one of the players asked!

Admittedly, a lot of the prep in this campaign is already done by Skerples, shared with me through the module. But I could have gone with a vibe, a list of cool places to visit, a list of things loosely going on on the setting and a list of names to invoke when a new NPC appears. And you could probably do without any of those things!

What you need to set up a sandbox campaign is not a huge load of prep. Is just enough to present an engaging premise and to answer confidently enough to whatever shenanigans your players throw themselves into.

I have yet to write a single faction sheet. Or a NPC background. I possibly will. But that will be whenever I consider it fun enough.

[taylorannnx]

Chefs de Partie

It's here! It's here! It's finally here!

Chefs de Partie is such a personal project for me and a career milestone. As someone who loves cooking with others, I wanted to make a minigame for RPG campaigns that's quick and fun.

This is the first project I've been the creative lead on with more than 1 other person on the team and I was very brave asking friends and individuals whose work I admire to work with me on this. We have layout by Nala J. Wu, editing by Marielle Ko, and recipes from Austin Taylor, Basil Wright, Danny Quach, DT 'Honey' Saint, Erin Roberts, and Poorna M. (aka my Dream Team!)

This one page game is 10% legalese & credits, 30% rules, and 60% examples of how you can integrate it into D&D 5e, Blades in the Dark, Lasers & Feelings, and Fate Core. Zero prep is required, just 15-30 minutes of game time.

Please consider grabbing a copy for $4.95 today (with options for 50% and 100% off in the product description) here.

[alphachromeyayo]

Cyberpunk 2077 got me making heavy music for smashing ice and installing daemons 🤘💾🌐❄️

(with some help from a ludicrously '90s Shadowrun commercial)

[vintagerpg]

This is SLA Industries (1993). That’s pronounced “slay,” incidentally, a fact that should give you some insight into the overall temperament of the game.

Let’s see if I can do this in the character limit. The titular company is run by Mr. Slayer, a pumpkin-headed supervillain, and it sits at the center of a horrible, violent universe. The company headquarters is surrounded by post-apocalyptic city ruins called Cannibal Sectors that are filled with all manner of mutants, monsters and serial murderers. Players are freelancers (of COURSE, why would there be paid benefits in a dystopia) who hunt monsters and take part in office politics.

There is a laundry list of super obvious influences. The goth and industrial music scenes are big one — lots of Siouxsie’s with big guns (and top hats) in the art. 40K is another, both in some of the art and in the waist-deep approach to lore. It being a product of Scotland, I expect 2000AD is in the mix, though not as front and center as I would have guessed. There’s some cyberpunk elements (the megacorp, for one), but SLA’s prime science fiction is more in line with the schlocky dystopias of Death Race 2000 and The Running Man, especially in the game’s notion that the players are probably on-camera through most of their exploits, an eerie (if likely entirely accidental) anticipation of reality TV. All of this is filtered, to varying degrees, through the aesthetics and sensibilities of early 90s manga and anime. The result is a big old stew pot of the likes of Rifts and Battlelords, but slathered in nihilism rather than bombast.

System? Oh god, there’s a system under all this? Oh, yea, there it is, on page 110. There is so much lore in this book that even when I am staring right at the system, I can’t really parse it, because I am still reeling from all the factions and history. It looks complicated and embedded in too many words.

[handwrittenhello]

this is ursula, my most recent tabletop character! she’s like if your older sister decided she also needed to be your personal trainer despite nobody asking. don’t ask her where she got her sword or why it makes her fly into a homicidal rage when she uses it 🤫

[acidhydraart]

an attempt at ominous ambient industrial music (for my lancer campaign)

[theedoctorb]

Lessons Learned from Both Sides of Games

CW: Discussion of harassment, threats, and mental health challenges. I’m a clinical psychologist who has been working at the intersection of mental health and the game industry for just over seven years. My whole job is to help educate companies, communities, and individuals on mental wellness and to bolster that wellness across the entire game space. I was a gaming superfan for my entire life before that. I still have the first sixty issues of Nintendo Power on a shelf. Having spent considerable time in the game industry and even more time outside of it, I thought I might share some insights I’ve learned in the process, especially given how often I see people forget some of these things.  

The People Who Design and Make Games Are People Who Love Games 

The game industry is brutal. It’s hard to find a steady job in it. Many jobs are underpaid and undervalued. There’s chronic gender-based violence, and marginalized voices are often excluded from conversations and representation. Overwork and burnout are so common that they become topics of gallows humor at industry gatherings. While people are trying to change all of this (it’s a major aspect of my job), these are all still sadly true.  

Why is this important? Because it shows that the people who are making your games make games because they passionately want to. In the better part of a decade that I’ve had frank, private conversations with industry employees at all levels, I’ve never met a studio employee who didn’t care about games. They love them. They’re players themselves. It doesn’t matter whether it’s video games or tabletop games, they love games. The vast majority of studio employees I’ve met also care about the community. They just want to make games people enjoy. Does that mean they don’t make mistakes? They do. Most also genuinely care about fixing them and making your game experience the best it can be. They wouldn’t put up with the harshness of the industry if they didn’t! 

Additionally, corporations make moves to maximize their profits over consumer demands. Most corporations are – after all – in the business of making money. That still doesn’t negate the fact that they’re generally made up of individuals who care deeply. 

What Goes on Behind-The-Scenes is so Different Than I Thought 

Before I started working in games, I did what so many fans do: think of the companies as faceless entities with malevolent intent and speculated wildly with my friends, reveling in the schadenfreude of corporate trip-ups. What I learned after getting into the industry is that the companies are made of individuals. Some with more power than others. A lot more, in some cases, but it’s still individuals who make our games and make up the companies. 

Some companies are bigger, and that generally brings a slow-churning bureaucracy with a lot of conflicting needs and perspectives. Why don’t you hear about the inner workings of those companies as fans? Because company employees are often under non-disclosure agreements (NDA) and non-disparagement agreements, and companies have designated representatives who speak for them. I’ve lost count of how many times friends of mine have seen fan speculation trending or some “confirmed” leak about their company or project, and they desperately wanted to say, “That’s not how it works! I was in that meeting! It didn’t go like that at all!” but they can’t. Not without risking their jobs and even massive financial penalties for contract breach.  

What’s more, there are often intricate webs of sponsorships and contractual obligations that confound any speed of decision making. That’s at both the creator and corporate level. Even your favorite creators might be under some of the same contracts as employees and have similar restrictions on what they can and cannot say about a brand or company without risking their livelihoods.  

It was both eye-opening and humbling to realize that I genuinely had no idea how the inside of the game-making process worked when I was a fan, despite my Dunning-Kruger-esque self-assuredness. I had no idea the specifics of any one project, which I still generally don’t unless I’ve also signed an NDA for a specific project. There are often too many layers of insider nuance, and much beyond that is pure speculation. 

Rage-bait Fandom is a Thing, and It Actually Hurts People 

Let me be clear about something, I’m not talking about all fans here. I’m not even talking about the majority of fans. I’m talking about a small subsection of fans who – in some cases – literally profit by building content platforms on stoking the rage of the fanbase. They might ostensibly clutch their pearls and protest that they are doing it all for the community they supposedly represent, but then they use their platform to fan the flames of rumor and innuendo. They spread misinformation, and the misinformation does spread. It spreads because it preys on our various biases about corporations as faceless monsters who want to hurt fandoms. It preys on an us-versus-them dynamic. It intuitively makes sense to us. Then our rage escalates because others around us bolster it with their rage. 

Some of these content creators claim to have insider knowledge of a studio when no one at the studio knows who they are, or worse, the people at the studio do know them, dislike them, and can’t publicly say anything to correct the misinformation they spread.  It should be noted that I’m not referring to reputable journalists who engage in due diligence regarding the veracity of anonymous sources. I’m talking about content creators who build their platforms on manufactured rage and misinformation, sometimes even naming names of studio employees – employees who often have no influence or power over the decisions which were made.  

This is where the harassment often begins. Harassment of studio employees is so common in games that it is also periodically the subject of gallows humor at industry gatherings. The problem is that it’s not funny when people receive repeated, unwanted contact from other people. It’s not funny to receive emails and DMs of graphically violent imagery, death threats, or threats of sexual assault. It’s not funny when fans declare that it’s “open-season” on moderators in forums and streams because they’re paid (not always) by the corporation. It’s not funny when friends of mine develop full-blown posttraumatic stress disorder because their private information has been publicly released by angry fans, their families also receive death threats, or the SWAT team bursts through the doors of their house because someone called 911 with a fake anonymous tip.  

Before I worked in the industry, I couldn’t imagine the kind of toll this took on people, because they weren’t people to me; they were a faceless, malevolent corporation. Now I know differently and check in on my friends often, especially anyone whose job is public-facing. Corporate actions can and should be scrutinized (again, part of my job), but scrutiny is not harassment, and harassment and threats are not okay. If you believe harassment is okay, then you’re actively hurting the people who are trying to make the games you claim to love. You’re hurting the games you claim to love. 

Final Thoughts 

What are the take-home lessons I learned in all this time? It boils down to a few things: 

Most game employees love games and just want to make good ones you enjoy. That’s why they are in this difficult industry. 

There are often things going on behind-the-scenes that we don’t know about, and that often confounds processes. 

There’s a whole sub-industry regarding manufactured fan rage, and it hurts people by tacitly (or overtly) encouraging harassment.  

Corporate decisions can and should be scrutinized, but harassment and threats towards individuals are not okay.   

It’s still sometimes hard to let go of my previous biases, especially when companies make decisions that hurt the community, but I’m fortunate to be surrounded by people who are willing to say, “Hey, maybe we take a breath and think this through?” or even, “I think you’re wrong here, and here’s why…” That way, I can channel my anger in more productive ways that don’t hurt others, especially given most of us who are fans share the same goal: wanting the games and community to be as amazing as possible.