#ttrpg save file*

[simbrilliance]

TTRPG Save File Townies: Folklore Amirahn. Tiefling | Warlock | Lawful Neutral | Long Hair | Tattoos & Freckles | Has a Familiar.

Meet Folklore! Folklore is a tiefling celestial warlock, pact of the chain. Her familiar with a white raven called Myth. Her aspiration is Spellcraft & Sorcery, and her traits are Ambitious, Art Lover, & a modded trait called Sugarbaby. She wants to spend as much of her time as possible embracing the beautiful and the magical, and is truly hoping to find a very wealthy patron who's willing to fund her art (as well as her expensive lifestyle).

For @morrigan-sims Random CAS Challenge: D&D Edition

[shadynightly]

The forest of CanopyClan, near the river bank. This is to be the start screen of my MOTW campaign using warrior cats as the base for the setting.

[townofcrosshollow]

Setting up my first solo RPG campaign!

I figure I might as well blog about my first real experimentation with solo RPGs, since I think some of y'all might be interested in it and it'll help me organize my thoughts. I'm just going to talk about my basic setup first, and I'll make some separate posts a little later down the line about the setting and the characters.

The tools I'll be using are the second edition of the Mythic GM Emulator and a cyberpunk adventure generator you can get on DriveThruRPG. I've printed out all of the relevant pages for reference, so I don't have to stick to my computer when I play!

For this little campaign, I'll be playing a custom PBTA hack I created about a year back. It does not actually have a name, but I'll be calling it Cybergnostics. It's a blend of cyberpunk and religious horror inspired by gnostic theology. The characters are downtrodden Heretics living in the slums of Arcadia beneath the watchful eye of the Church. It's got many of the typical trademarks of cyberpunk- cybernetics, gangs, heists, all that shit. Plus a religious twist. Keep your head down to avoid catching the ire of the militant Inquisitor force. Use mysterious cybernetic implants to open your brain to the truth beyond. Find gigs on the Aethernet through the mysterious Oracle. Tons of fun shit.

Rather than actually using all of the rules I created then, which are mostly just lightly edited versions of Apocalypse World, I'll stick pretty closely to the AW moves and simply mod them with some of the rules I created. Here are the big changes, under the cut...

Cyberpunk obviously requires some kind of mechanical skill, so I've decided that Sharp will encompass anything analytical and practical, while Weird will be replaced with Savvy to represent all things mechanical and cybernetic.

There's a new tracker alongside XP, and it's called Gnosis. It represents your metaphysical journey, and unlike XP, it can be increased or decreased in play through different moves. When the Gnosis gauge is full, it resets to 0 and you take a Revelation.

A Revelation is some dark truth about the world and the character's place in it that they've stumbled upon. Certain moves will allow them to walk these back and unlearn them. In addition, if the character's health gauge is empty, rather than dying they can choose to gain an Apocalypse- a dire, hopeless statement about reality which can not be removed once it's added. If you've got 5 Revelations (including Apocalypses) and would gain another, the character is done for.

Three new basic moves. Hack Into Something, which is pretty self-explanatory. Indoctrination, where the character can attempt to unlearn horrible truths about the world to reduce their Gnosis. And Appeal to a Power, where the character can request assistance from a higher being. I may also write a move for making a pact with a demon and for fixing shit, but I'm not sure yet!

Body mods. They're categorized as Aesthetic, Functional, and Psyche. Aesthetic mods are basically just for flavour. Functional mods have specific physical benefits. Psyche mods have more metaphysical benefits. You can only take as many mods as your mod capacity, which starts at 2 and can be increased with advancements.

My plan is to play several characters at once, as I don't think this will be particularly difficult for me and I would prefer to have several stable main characters rather than one and a bunch of NPCs.

The playbook concepts I'm thinking of going with for my characters are the Inquisitor (a holy lawkeeper inexplicably drawn to heresy), the Fake (a person with an addiction to cybernetics), and the Glitchmancer (one who wields their knowledge of reality to bend it to their will). I'm going to be fleshing out who they are and the world they live in tomorrow!

[batvillainz]

Hey what do people use instead of the Trove for pirating ttrpgs. I know it went down a while ago and I've scavenged its corpse on the payback machine for everything I want lmao

[alexsgamingcorner]

the portal barcade and bowling alley

[anim-ttrpgs]

Our first official original TTRPG, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is planned for kickstarter launch late 2023/early 2024!

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is an original, fully fledged, 200-page 2d6 TTRPG from The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery inspired by The X-Files, Kolchak: The Nightstalker, and much more!

Eureka features investigation mechanics that let players take initiative, use their characters’ unique strengths to find clues, and deduce conclusions themselves rather than to just walking into a room and roll Investigate.

Failed Rolls are not the End!

The Eureka! mechanic accumulates points throughout the adventure that can be used to help prevent investigators from getting totally stuck, but also a reward investigators for solving the mystery without ever getting stumped, because these points can be saved for life-or-death situations instead!

Tactical Combat!

High-stakes realistic combat can end lives in seconds through deep strategy that encourages careful thinking and allows for complex maneuvers. Thoughtful positioning, understanding of one’s surroundings, and having the right weapon for the job play as much of a role in victory as a character’s stats, if not more, which is good, because most of these PCs will not be larger-than-life action heroes!

Roleplay-driven Mechanics, and Mechanic-driven Roleplay!

Player characters’ personalities and ideals determine many of their gameplay mechanics, giving each character a totally unique way to play through Eureka! This won’t get confusing though, as all of these different mechanics use the same underlying systems that are easy to understand! Changing characters won’t require you to completely relearn the game!

Man-eating Monsters Hiding in Plain Sight!

 As investigators face off against metaphorical (or sometimes literal) monsters, the rare investigator may literally be a monster themselves, and keeping it secret from the other players while having to sate their sinister hunger is a game of intrigue all its own.

Extreme Versatility!

Eureka is designed to be able to run (just about) any adventure module set between about 1850 and the present day with hardly any adjustments to either the system or the module, no matter what system that module was originally made for! Investigation, action, survival-horror, you name it, Eureka can run it!

Player-driven investigation, a rewarding system for solving mysteries themselves, realistic high-stakes combat, gameplay determined by roleplay, and inter-party deception are all features you can look forward to in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.

Launch is still a ways off, but it doesn’t hurt to get the word out early!

Follow this blog to stay up to date on our launch preparations!

[pandiongames]

While I was cleaning up our project folders today, I finally created a Project Template that I can just copy/paste when starting a new project.

I figured since it took me hundreds of hours of procrastination and 18 months of disorganized frustration to finally get that setup, I'd try to save someone else the trouble of doing the same, and released the whole folder and its templates zipped up on itchio.

The zip file includes:

The full folder structure we use when starting a project.

ProjectName.gdoc - A writing template with basic headers and our in-line project management method.

We use this for our core writing, collaboration, editing, and project management.

ProjectName.afpub - A basic A5 zine layout setup for print, with basic master pages configured, page numbers, CMYK color profile, margins, and bleed.

We don't like baseline or grids by default. They're not configured in this file.

Images Folder - We store all game export images here. Such Page or Spread exports, marketing images we've assembled, etc. We don't store images that will be imported into the game here. That's in Resources.

Images/Itchio_Socials_Template.afpub - This template has all of our common needed image sizes setup for marketing and setup of our itchio project pages.

PDFs Folder - This is where we export PDFs to. Final PDFs ready for upload go into "Itchio Final" and Print-Ready PDFs are uploaded to "Mixam Final".

We work really hard to only keep the most current PDFs in the two "Final" folders. If you want a v2, v3, or v1.2.222.final.v8.pdf in the main folder, that's fine. But I highly encourage you to spend the time to keep the "Final" folders clean.

Tip: Check out the "Manage Versions" feature in Google Drive. 

Press Kit Folder - Contains our press kit gdoc template, an assets folder, and another PDF folder.  We end up sharing this entire folder out for Press, and link to this folder within the Press Kit document itself.

If you want more information how to write a Press Kit, check out PlusOneExp's fantastic video on that.

Resources Folder - This is where we put inspirations for the game along with art and design assets to use in the game itself. This folder gets pretty messy by the time the project is done.

[the-oricami-curio]

Blood Drinker Lotus

Nelumbo sangua

The lotus is commonly found floating in the pools of swamp water, but may also grow in mounds among the peat. Though the name may be deceiving, it is actually two organisms, a cnidarian and a plant, in a mutualistic relationship. Normally white in color it turns a crimson red after feeding on a victim's blood.

When a creature touches the lotus, its tendrils shoot out in a 5ft radius. All creatures within the area must make a DC 17 Constitution saving throw, taking 3d12 magical piercing damage on a failure. If the creature fails by 5 or more it takes an additional 6d6 piercing damage as the lotus drinks their blood.

Each part of the lotus is a separate target, the cnidarian and the plant. Both have 5 AC and 15 HP each. The cnidarian is resistant to fire damage while the plant is resistant to cold damage.

Ko-fi - Early access weekly items, Transparent PNG files and alternate forms, map packs, small settings and more!

Discord - Talk with artists, science nerds and TTRPG lovers alike!

Twitch - Talk about your character's, campaigns, while you can see me draw next week's homebrew! Every Thursday @ 9pm EST.

Commissions - See my commission prices and DM me for more information or a quote!

[noszle]

I really hope this doesn't come across as rude but I was wondering how come you haven't draw (or posted) anything in a while?

Hi! I don't read it as rude at all, no worries

I actually draw a LOT these days! I'm a happier artist than I have been ever before in my life.

The reason I don't post that much is....because I forget, truly. That and it takes a lot of extra effort to post. I draw tons of character tokens for the ttrpg games I run/am in.

The reason it takes extra effort to post them is because I save them as square background-less pngs for ease of use in the VTT we use, and when I post them I like to make sure they are watermarked, cropped correctly and have a white backgrounds. So when I go to queue up a bunch of art to post it means I have to open each file and adjust it before posting.

I should just make a separate version for posting when I finish them initially but....I always forget. And sometimes I'm in a rush to finish them too. So...that's how it goes ;w;

Here's a bust I did for a lamia character named Vohanna. She's a historian/archeologist and super nerd

[nefarrilou]

Holy *smokes* -- I found you randomly while I was browsing the Simblreen tag, and I'm *so glad I did*. Your stuff is AMAZING! I am absolutely gobsmacked and blown away! It was an instant follow from me. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I was loving your stuff, and I can't wait to see more! I'm gonna be working on a few more occult sims of my own, because I'm creating a save file based on the modern AU versions of my D&D/TTRPG characters. This is so inspiring!

Thank you so much for reaching out and sharing this with me, it really means a lot! 🥺💜 I’m excited to say that I’ve already got some ideas brewing for Simblreen this year and I’m really hoping I can bring them to life 👻🤞 (I’ve also participated in some D&D and RPG challenges if you’re interested in checking those out!)

[simbrilliance]

TTRPG Save File Townies: Salamniah Jorisius.

Air Genasi | Ranger | Chaotic Evil | Hair in an Up-do | Always With a Weapon | Facial Piercings + Painted Nails.

Meet Salamniah! She's an air genasi ranger with a fondness for animals and very little else. However, she is a harsh mistress to her animal companions, making sure that they always perform to their utmost excellence -- she raises the best of the best. And if she happens to have some of them trained to kill on command? No one else needs to know that. Her aspiration is Friend of the Animals, and her traits are Evil, Jealous, and Animal Enthusiast.

For @morrigan-sims Random CAS Challenge: D&D Edition.

[greyias]

They lived! (mostly)

Bandit fight went well for the most part. Eliana accidentally turned herself into a sheep, but then she got better. She barded her way inside with a pitch perfect halfling impression, they cleaned up Withers' house for him, then tralala'd their way into the secret enclave tunnel where one of Eli's rangers oh so helpfully tried to disable a statue's laser vision with an arrow, which made the statue super mad, and then it immolated Eliana as her party fled outside, and proceeded to have delightful banter as she died ignobly on the floor. I did not get screenshots of this, unfortunately.

But since no TPK was had, Honor Mode was still active! Pretty Boy Elf Ranger (who is her boyfriend in their alternate incarnation) snuck back in, used a revivify scroll on her, and then had to haul her up like two times as they fled from the angry statue. This experience is actually pretty close to her antics in the TTRPG space so… score one for accuracy I guess?

They managed to actually take out the little goblin ambush inside by coming from the other direction, luring the goblins into range of the statues by use of many cats and minor illusions (RIP all the kitties), and used their HANDS to deactivate the angry laser statues.

As they still had some spell slots leftover I was like "we should get them in just a little more trouble before sleeps!" Then proceeded to wander into the Blighted Village, and Eliana succefully convinced them she was there to write everyone's life story. She passed every single persuasion check inside, including when she faced off against three ogres by herself.

Exhausted of easy potential fights to run through, I sent everyone back to camp to have a well-earned sleeps.

That was where the trouble began.

Because now there's a possibility my Honor Mode run has ended, not because of a TPK, but because everyone got stuck in a long rest after fucking Astarion decided to try snacking on Eli.

THANKS ASTARION

The Googs has failed me on all solutions, so I might have a soft locked save file here, which stinks because she and the others were doing so GOOD! I'll have to keep looking through mods to see if I can install one that maybe will help rouse my 3 rangers 1 bard gang from their eternal slumber

for now rest my children you earned it

[stardusted-queerness]

Writing Resources

I've been writing all my life, and I've been saving resources I use over the past couple of years. I'm gonna post them all here, so that others can use them because some of these are rather obscure.

Resource: Character Profile Desc: a 20 page PDF file that helps you better flesh out your character. PDF is editable directly. Very useful for any type of character.

Resource: Character Sheet Desc: a very long character sheet hosted on DeviantArt. I'm not sure if it's still being updated, but it is VERY extensive and covers everything from the basics to pet peeves. Best used for the main cast.

Resource: Name Generator Desc: a site that hosts a number of name generators. You add a few variables, and it gives you a list of names. Has everything from a "quick name" generator to a "plot generator". Very useful for a variety of things (not just writing).

Resource: Worldbuilding Prompts Desc: a site with writing prompts. Pretty good for getting the basis of your world

Resource: World Anvil Desc: a site to house all of your worldbuilding. Basically acts like a wiki, but for worlds. Has a premium version, but the free version works just fine (but you're limited to 2 worlds and ~175 articles for each world). Can be used for any type of writing: creative, screenplay, even ttrpgs like DnD.

Resource: Inkarnate Desc: Map-making site. Pretty cool, and has assets that allow creation of dungeon maps, world maps, and even scene maps. The free version is a bit meh on the assets, while the pro version ($5/month or $25/year) is a lot better. Additionally, the free version limits you to 10 maps, while with the pro version, you can create ~1,500 maps. If you use pro and then cancel your subscription, any maps that you created while using pro will be locked. You will not be able to edit them. I learned this the hard way.

Resource: Gallery of Faces Desc: pretty much like the "thispersondoesnotexist" site, just under a different name. AI-generated human photos. Can edit the settings to include a specific age group, a specific sex, etc. Really good for people who aren't good artists and need/like having a visual of their character.

Resource: Fantasy Calendars Desc: Allows you to make a completely new calendar. You can choose the names of the months, weekdays, everything. It's an absolutely wonderful tool and really helps if you don't want to use a modern calendar. This is the calendar I made myself. It's just an example of what you can do.

Resource: Word Combiner Desc: a tool to combine up to 4 words together. Shows just about any and every possibility. Found this useful when trying to make a name or a language.

Resource: Fantasy Language Generator Desc: another generator, but for languages instead. There's a few variables you can mess with, and it'll generate counterparts to the 30,000 most commonly used words in English. You can save the language as a file and load it on the site at a later time. Completely free.

Resource: Word Counter Desc: Just a word-counting site. Useful if you frequent Discord & use bots like WriterBot or Sprinto (writing sprint bots), as you only have 2 minutes after the sprint ends to submit word count.

Resource: Worldbuilding Checklist :) Desc: a very extensive worldbuilding checklist. Covers everything from races to the economy to the current fashion trends. Really awesome resource.

All of these have proven to be really useful to me, so I wanted to share these. I just hope these are useful to others ^_^

[homebrewbydek]

TTRPG Travel Speed Calculator

Hi gang!

Sorry that I've been so quiet on the homebrew front. I have a bunch ready to go but the Executives are not Functioning.

In lieu of that, however, I wanted to share with you all the stable release of v1.2 of my Travel Speed Calculator

I used speeds presented in the DMG/PHB of 5th edition, but a lot of these speeds should be analogous with most settings.

It's a G-Drive Sheet, and it should be locked so that the only way to access it is by saving a file to your own account/desktop.

I made this resource because none of the free ones that I could find inspired much in the way of user friendliness or range of speeds.

If anyone has any suggestions about how to improve it, though, feel free to DM me!

Stay fresh, cheesebags 💜

[blackboard-monitor]

ttrpg character art commissions

digital character art: 50€ 

full body

full colour with simple shading

includes any items/weapons your character may be wearing or carrying

your choice of background: flat colour, simple gradient, or transparent (I can save multiple versions upon request)

you will receive a digital file (.png unless otherwise specified)

what I need from you

a description of your character

functional: class and any subclass/specialisation, what they’re good at, how they fight, any weapons or tools they use or have on their person visual: race (both in the dnd and the real life sense), gender, age, body type, hair style and colour, eye colour, skin colour, the clothes and armour they wear, any other noticeable physical characteristics like scars, tattoos, jewellery… personality: background, brief summary of backstory if you like, temperament (e.g. grumpy, bubbly, sneaky etc), anything else you feel is relevant to their character

specific pose you’d like the character to be drawn in, if you have one

any visual reference* of the character you have (your own art, artwork commissioned from someone else, a pinterest board, a tag on your blog, the name of a famous person or character they look like, culture or historical period their outfit is based on, etc.)

the ability to contact you throughout the process in case I need to ask follow-up questions

* if you are not able to provide any visual references, i will include an additional 10€ design fee, because without visual reference i need to do research to come up with a design, which can be time-consuming

character token: 15€, or 5€ as an add-on to a full-size illustration

a little square image of your character seen from above

if whatever platform you play on requires a specific size, let me know, otherwise I’ll make it 700 x 700, which seems to work great on roll20

includes a drop shadow like the examples below (unless you don’t want one)

transparent background

you will receive a .png file

i accept payment via paypal, or mobilepay if you happen to be in finland or denmark

if you’re interested, please contact me via DM and i will send you my email address

sending me a message is not a commitment to commission me, so please free to contact me with any questions as well :)

[open-hearth-rpg]

Engagement & Flashbacks: Great RPG Mechanics #RPGMechanics: Week Three

I have sat through hundreds of in-game planning sessions. There’s an objective, maybe specific, maybe general, maybe- god forbid- we’re discussing which objective we want to approach. These can be wonderful and interesting moments to explore character and role play to show what your PC values. They can be. But those are exceptions rather than the rule. I look back at the hours sunk into those which ended up in painful, circular, player-tension exacerbating, and time-consuming bad meetings.

My particular pet peeve from this is the player who listens and waits until someone has proposed a line of action and then says they don’t like it. They point out corner-case problems and wild possibilities which *could* make things collapse. But when pressed for fix suggestions or alternatives, they shrug their shoulders. I loathe them. I’ve seen many of them. Playing them at the ttrpg table made me that much more ready to flip out when people did this in actual work meetings in the real world.

Don’t get me wrong– I love it when a plan comes together. There’s few things more satisfying as a GM than to watch the players consider a problem, develop a solution, and reveal how their individual talents can save the day. But setting a planning session into motion is like lighting a stick of dynamite. Sometimes the players come together and manage to extinguish that fuse. More times the dynamite goes off and blows a hole in the session.

So that has long been an established problem that GMs have worked through, usually by degrees of heavy-handed riding the whip.

Blades in the Dark provided another solution and one, honestly, which completely changed my approach to this at every table I run. You have a job, a score, an objective. You can keep choosing that tight by filing down the number of options. Once you know generally what you want to do, you define the kind task and what’s your key element. Then we go to the engagement roll.

That roll is based on the challenge of the situation, the resources and information you have, and preparation (but only in the loosest sense). Good stuff gives you more dice, bad stuff takes away dice. You roll a pool of d6s and check the result. If the highest die is a six, we start the scene on the job with your characters in control. They’ve gotten past the easy layers and are in the more challenging part, but in a good spot. On a 4-5 it's more a mixed bag– you start out with some things at risk. You have to overcome a standard challenge right away. On a 1-3 we drop you in the shit. You’re in but things have gone wrong and the situation’s desperate.

But it's the other half of the system which completes this and makes things brilliant. Players can flashback to preparations they’ve made. They can improvise these on the fly. They can cost stress and require a test, but that’s dependent on how wild or impactful that prep is. Combining that with the flexible loadout system makes the players feel OK about rolling into a situation without having spent an hour working out all the possibilities.

And at least at my tables, the secret is that flashbacks don’t get done that often. Sometimes PCs will get jammed in a corner or a player will have a particularly clever concept. But Flashbacks IMHO provide a mental cushion for risk-adverse players. It’s the GM saying, “let’s get to playing, I’m not going to screw you over, and you’ll have the chance to pull cool stuff out.” And it works– and I promise you I use it in just about every game I run. We still do meetings and planning discussions, but I know I can wrap it up and move it to the play if that begins to look like it is going to blow up.

Side-note: Blades isn’t the first game to lean on flashbacks as a key element. I think that would be Leverage, which is an amazing ground-breaking game by a dynamite team of designers. It uses that to model the reveals of the TV shows it's based on. There may be others, but that’s the one I remember.