#ttrpg review

[hendrik-ten-napel]

Two things I like about Quinns Quest: 1) his preference for vibes-based design over system talk, and 2) his recognition of the power of roleplaying games to play with real world themes and history. That segment on how the Wildsea might represent, in certain senses, a better world, or the segment on language and culture, represent conversations I long for most in our hobby.

[arsene-inc]

I want to share this mad idea a french ttrpg designer had.

A system of rules to speedrun campaigns and scenarios.

Warning : the table MUST have played it normally before. These rules are for giving a second life to these campaign books catching dust in your library

These rules are an add-on to the system you used for the campaign. Now you can Bunny hop, glitch, clip, go out of bonds in your game. Bugs can appear. Suddenly the game is in another language, good luck to the players who don't speak it.

You can add little challenges, the same as video game speedrun. Like an all boss run, a no hit run, a non lethal run, etc.

Honestly I found the idea bonkers. I want to try it, seems like a good idea for a crazy game night.

[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:

[the-princeps]

Lancer review (kinda)

So most of you will have heard of lancer, it's a ttrpg made by Miguel Lopez and Tom Bloom. It's great, I adore it. Now Lancer is a combat-heavy (a grid is a necessity), primarily digital ttrpg, if that's not your jam, lancer won't be. Lancer has COMPCON, a site that helps with making characters, managing things, looking stuff up etc.

Visual design: So the visual design is stunning and has a strong identity. I don't have any images linked here but you should take a look at the images of the mechs, they are stunning and immediately show who they are, you can see that it's a fast combat mech, an odd pirate ttrpg or just a wall.

The illustrations are gorgeous and there's a lot of them.

Mechanical design:

Lancer has a robust design, for example: The hp-esque's, there's heat, structure and hp, heat is a intuitive risk vs reward system that let's you push beyond your limits, it's lovely but not particularly eventful. The hp and structure interaction however is fascinating, you see whenever your mech reaches 0hp you don't die, instead you lose 1 structure, when at 0 structure you die, whenever the structure is damaged you gain some detriments. This design allows both the GM and player to easily gain an overview how damaged characters are by how much structure they have.

Then there are the mounts, mounts are where the mech equips it's weapons, kinda like battletech (though only in that way). This limitation on the weapons you are carrying overcomes the option bloat that appears in the higher levels of many ttrpgs, without removing meaningful choice in both character creation and combat, I would almost go as far as to say it adds more meaningful choice, because it allows the creators to push the amount of stuff you can have, without bloating the options (in a fight) too much.

My mechanical gripes are small, but are there primarily it's stuns and scanning. I'll start with stuns, it's the same problem as always, stunning takes you out of the game, stunning a boss is annoying for the GM and is annoying and stunning a player means they'll be playing checkers in the background for the rest of the battle (or maybe just 1 or 2 rounds, which is more likely).

Lore design:

The lore is great, but it is necessary for the game. It is near enough impossible to play in any pre-existing setting with lancer, because you can't really port NHP's, Horus or so many other things into another setting as is and if you don't port them as is then things will be weird.

The lore in the book is also presented somewhat oddly, it gives you an overviews of the whole organisation, rather than the info the GM actually needs about the setting, but it's a small gripe.

Post Scriptum: Lancer's player rules are also just straight up free to look at on compcon, all of them. It's great, go read it, right now. Do it, right now.

[tabletopgayventures]

Any Requests?

Hey everyone! I have a full list of 150 games to review. I plan on reviewing the core system mechanics first before reviewing individual games. However, I wanted to ask, is there a game you want me to review first? Please know that I will not review Dungeons and Dragons 5e or Pathfinder 2e. There are plenty of other places to see reviews or learn about those games. If I know what people want to hear about first then I can plan games to learn the system. Feel free to send me an ask about this! Also please reblog!

[cannibalhalflinggaming]

"The gorgeous book and art catches your eye, but what makes Wildsea unique in its worldbuilding vision is that there’s follow-through. The concept is outlandish: The world has been overrun by a veritable forest of massive trees, and your characters ‘sail’ across it on a ship that’s essentially a giant chainsaw. From this base concept comes many of the underlying setting assumptions, and they help the world feel cohesive even though it, at a high level, works very differently from our world. In an ocean of wood fire is catastrophic, so there is taboo against open flame. That affects how things are cooked, which in turn affects culture around food. The ‘spits’, settlements above the treetops, are threatened by the constantly growing and shifting flora, so impermanence is, once again, reflected through the whole culture. The game sticks the landing on creating something new by thinking through the core concept they present." - @levelonewonk

[vikingschism]

Thoughts on the Stormlight TTRPG

This will be a fairly lengthy post detailing my impressions of the Stormlight Archives TTRPG by Brotherwise Games based on a session played with some other fans of Sanderson's works. Some general details of the scenario are discussed as well as the details of the pre-generated character I played, but is otherwise spoiler-free.

Background

I like Brandon Sanderson's books well enough so I was naturally interested in an RPG set in his most epic series (The Stormlight Archives). My tastes in TTRPGs generally tend towards the more narrative focused games - I enjoy PBTA, FitD and Resistance Engine games - so seeing that it was going to be a D20 system with a D&D 5e style character sheet had me a bit worried. I have enjoyed tactical combat before with systems like Draw Steel (having tried it out in a playtest - looking forward to another session soon) or even Pathfinder 2E (even if I find that system to be a bit much in other places), so there was still some hope.

I decided to take part as a player in an adventure making use of a prepared scenario using the freely available beta rules. This scenario was intended to show off the game and get new players, possibly new to TTRPGs as a whole, going. The basic premise is that the players are on an expedition towards some ancient ruins

The Character

There were multiple pre-generated characters available so I elected to play as Vedd - a disgraced Alethi soldier serving in the bridge crews. This was essentially the basic warrior class which suited me well enough, though in a full campaign there would be the option to have the character become a Radiant which would definitely give more opportunity to express the character through the powers selected. The character notes gave some good hooks to get the player into character; in the case of Vedd it was his connections to his bridge crew, his grizzled nature as one of the longest serving Bridgemen, and that he has attracted the attention of a spren who appears as a streak of light when he takes heroic or self sacrificing action.

The character sheet was serviceable, though it was sometimes hard to locate the skills I was looking for when making a test due to the amount present, so the organisation maybe could've been better. There's also just a lot of derived stats on the sheet - do we really need a carrying capacity for example? That seems a bit more simulationist than this game needs. I do like the idea of having Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual defences and them being placed between the two stats that determine the value is nice. It's also nice that the stats are just the bonus rather than needing to derive the bonus like in 5e. Skill modifiers also made sense since you just add the points in that skill to the relevant stat to calculate the modifier.

In the scenario my character's skills were mostly in athletics, perception, and heavy weaponry. The social skills weren't too high, although intimidation was definitely on the table. This spread of skills suggested a character who was taciturn in social settings but excelled when it came time to put himself into the thick of the action.

Combat

Overall it felt good to play, the combat system allowed for a lot of flexibility and I appreciated its action economy. Players can choose to take a fast or slow turn - a fast turn grants 2 actions, a slow turn grants 3. Fast players go first, then fast enemies, then slow players, then slow enemies - within each category there is no set initiative order, players can work it out themselves). On a turn you have a number of actions you can take, and some will cost more action points (for example a recovery costs two points - however you may want to do this on a fast turn if you think an enemy will attack first). This draws on both Pathfinder 2e (with the action point system) and Shadow of the Demon Lord with the fast/slow turns.

In each round everyone gets a single reaction too. Most of these reactions require spending a point of focus, but they give good options for mitigating damage or assisting in the fight (for example Reactive Strike is the Opportunity Attack equivalent, however it requires a focus point to use - these are limited and can be recovered or are regained fully on a long rest). In our fights in the session I didn't remember that I could use the reaction to dodge which would've given the enemy disadvantage on their strike, leading to me taking a large amount of damage. Another reaction involves assisting an ally when they attempt a test in combat in order to grant them advantage on the roll. This combos quite nicely with an action that allows the player to attempt a skill test to gain advantage on their next roll.

The abilities that my character had weren't too flashy, though I should've remembered to enter vigilant stance at the start of combat - this grants advantage on perception, increases deflect, and causes enemies to require 2 actions to attack allies. Combat training also meant I could graze (upon missing, deal the value of the damage dice with no modifier) a single enemy per round for free - normally grazing would cost a focus point.

Exploration

Outside of combat I had more mixed opinions - mainly related to the plot die. This is intended to add more narrative twists to skill tests - the intention is that this is rolled for tests that are more high stakes (the process of asking for it to be rolled is called "raising the stakes"). This is a d6 (although a proprietary die with symbols is available), and rolling a 5 or 6 grants an Opportunity while a 1 or 2 imposes a Complication as well as granting a bonus of double the value on the die face to the roll (which could be enough to push a bad roll into a success). A result of 3 or 4 does nothing, and rolling a 20 or 1 on any test grants an Opportunity and a Complication respectively (this does mean they can stack when rolling the die).

Opportunities can be spent to regain a focus point, grant advantage to an ally on their next test, turn a hit into a critical hit (on attack tests in combat), or on a beneficial narrative event (which the GM must rubber stamp) - some abilities also interact with these. Complications are imposed by the GM and can essentially do the opposite of what an Opportunity can do.

So what's my issue with it? I personally found that having a null result on the die (3 and 4) meant that Opportunities and Complications felt a little rarer than I would've liked - if the roll matters enough to use the plot die then I feel like it should really have one result or the other.

This system also interacts with Events - these are similar to clocks in games like Blades in the Dark where they signal an impending event. These are ticked, depending on whether the event is positive or negative with an Opportunity or a Complication. This never came up in the scenario, however I think this is another reason I'd prefer the plot die to always produce an Opportunity or Complication; as is Opportunities and Complications just don't come up that often, so it might make Events a bit harder to use. In a system like Blades the clocks are constantly being ticked which really contributes to the sense of impending danger, or gives players a focus on an objective in the scene (eg: escaping from something chasing them).

Skill tests otherwise were straightforward, and advantage is a standard roll 2 dice and pick the higher result (although interestingly advantage can stack and be applied to multiple dice in the roll - which does mean you can give the plot die advantage as well as the d20 if you have two advantages on a roll).

The Scenario

I don't want to spoil the scenario, however I will say it was decently put together. There was a fair amount of railroading, however since we were all there for that adventure I think that was ok. There wasn't anything that stood at as being too egregious and there was some nice artwork along the way to help picture the events. It also gave some good opportunities to play into the pregen characters. All of the players came out being fairly satisfied with the adventure; it will be interesting to see how the game plays once Radiant powers are involved.

Conclusion

Overall I feel the game was competently put together and will be a fun way to explore the worlds of Sanderson. I don't think it's going to be replacing any of my favourite narrative systems, however, and some areas (like the plot die) left something to be desired. The combat was fun and will likely only get more fun once characters have access to Radiant powers, so I wouldn't be against playing again. I likely would not want to GM however, as there is a bit more crunch than I prefer in my systems. It does also remain to be seen how the game will adapt other worlds such as Scadrial from Mistborn given the different tone and nature of the world.

For those who have read all of this, thank you - I hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts on the Stormlight TTRPG and I'm curious to know what other people think of it so far.

[zigmenthotep]

Hey everybody why not check out my review of transformation TTRPG To Change? A review so divisive that two people unsubscribed because of it!

[crackerjackalopegames]

In this dispatch of Jackalope Mail I finally played The Lost Universe, the TTRPG adventure written by NASA! It's got a lot of cool ideas that have really inspired me, but the book as a whole is flawed and a little difficult to use. Check out the full review through the link!

[cassimothwin]

What waits quivering beneath the crashing sea? Read The Isle, written by Luke Gearing and published by Spear Witch, to find out.

Designed for The Vanilla Game RPG, a lightweight retroclone OSR-system, The Isle is a body horror dungeon crawl adventure that’s pretty playable in most fantasy RPG systems with minimal reworking. I could see someone running it with Mörk Borg without much issue. This review is of the physical book, but it also comes with a PDF and an EPUB (yay EPUB!).

Something draws your players to the isle, a mostly forgotten, small, and haunted piece of sea-locked land that 10 monks call home. The party is likely to either force or lie their way to the seal: a bone-porcelain disc hidden beneath the monastery floor. Once broken, adventure calls from below, where there awaits hundreds of years of horrors with lore and worldbuilding woven into the fabric of each room…

There are 5(ish) floors of around 10-20 rooms each in this adventure. But what about these floors is so evocative? The dungeon is a bit indescribable as a whole. Strange and violent creatures with alarming habits occupy this prison. Floor 1 is close to what you’d expect to find in a dungeon near the sea, but the domain grows more horrifying the farther down intruders go. One of the “floors” is actually the inside of a huge mysterious sea-thing where players navigate through organs.

The creatures are sublime. Beyond being just undead, they’re wonderfully described and horrifying. They’re not all dangerous, and some even promise power. Players might meet an amalgam of pony teeth that rolls around chewing air and stone, choose between helping two undead brothers permanently remove the other from this plane, assist a worm in its quest to ratatouille a giant sea-thing creature, or just die to one of the many interesting yet easy-to-deliver traps...

Read the full review on my website! 👇

[presidentofbirds]

The Bleeding Lily Crowned in Shackles is an Abyssal and a chivalric queen of her domain - one granted to her in death by the Mask of Winters. While she owes the deathlord for her unlife, she walks a path of honor. I think she's a great example of a heroic Abyssal.

Her write up is extremely economical with wordcount, establishing a strong backstory and personality as well as a heathstone, manse, and artifact.

[totcoc0a]

This week's blog post is in honor of rewards going out to those who backed the 'Triangle Agency' crowdfunding campaign! I love this game and you can hear me beta test it with the @somewhereohio crew anywhere you can listen to podcasts!

Read my full review below!

[unlawfulgames]

Y’all! This person did a super cute review of using Gourmet Street as a solo adventure complete with art and little pop up scenes!

[mooniestarstruck]

Are you looking for a game to play this Halloween with your friends? Look no further! I got a great recommendation for you! Boneyard is a frantic game about being a necromancer and finding parts to create a body to animate. The fun doesn’t come from that alone, though, it comes from the competition in having to fend against other players and their attempts to usurp your body parts or even destroy them. It’s quite fun to play and only requires a d20, something to draw with and something to draw on, and the prompt list from the game!

The rules are simple: you roll a d20 to see if you get a body part and another to see how chaos ensues! From there, you read what happens from the lists of prompts, and you might get to choose the fate of your fellow necromancers. Mostly, it’s up to destiny to decide who gets ahead, but in those precious moments in which you get to choose who gets a setback, you feel like you’re holding the last +4 in a game of UNO.

The only hiccup with this system is that sometimes the gameplay might become a bit long and repetitive, but my friends and I have a great house rule to aid with that! It consists in rolling the “chaos ensues!” table only after getting a useful result in the “body part” one. To make things more dynamic, a high player count is advised, but it can definitely be played one-on-one.

The game’s design is pretty nice, with really cute illustrations and a well-organized distribution, and it is full of references from different pieces of horror media. Just a treat for the player! It shows that Darkheart Games put a fair amount of effort into this project, and however you choose to play it, I can guarantee you’ll have fun with this game, so I hope you give it a try!

[chaosos59]

Eberron is a great setting, but for the dedicated worldbuilder or historian there's some pieces that don't quite align with how things went down in the real world — in this post I explore how to use that to enhance your game!

[cannibalhalflinggaming]

Part 3 of our Rules-Lite Superhero RPG deep dive sees @sabrinatvband cover yet more games from Astonishing Super Heroes to With Great Power... but also talk about common threads, from low advancement to Batman analogues!