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games-franco · 2 months

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This may have already been asked about: but courtly intrigue games!?

THEME: Court Intrigue

Hello friend, I’ve got a nice selection for you, with surprisingly a lot of games housed in the Forged in the Dark framework! I’d also recommend checking out the bottom of this post for other games I’ve talked about in the past!

Court of Whispers, by Alexiconman.

The Court of Whispers… the nobility here are neither great nor good. They all have dark secrets they wish to keep hidden, while hoping that their rivals are exposed and lose face in court.

Court of Whispers is a TTRPG/social deduction game for four or more players playing competitively, but requiring negotiation and brief alliances to succeed. No dice, GM or stats are used. The Court itself can be wherever you want it to be - historical, fantastical, whatever. Perhaps it's a mythological pantheon or faerie court or convocation of demon dukes?

Decide on your name and title, then invent a dark secret in three parts.Your rivals will, amongst them, know these details, but you will know parts of their secrets. Who will be the last to have their secrets revealed??

A game all about piecing together information, this will probably appeal to you if you like social deduction games. Bargain away pieces of information that you hold in order to gain crucial secrets that belong to someone else. Lie, blackmail and negotiate until you think you have someone’s complete secret, and eliminate your opponent when you announce it to the group. The game ends when only one person remains, their reputation not completely tarnished.

Rebel Crown, by Narrative Dynamics.

Rebel Crown is a tabletop roleplaying game of courtly intrigue, obsessive ambition, and perilous conflict. One player takes on the role of the Claimant, former heir to the throne who was betrayed by their family and robbed of their rightful titles. Others play their most stalwart allies: wise chancellor, devoted knight, idealistic noble, vengeful soldier, or opportunistic outlaw. Conflicting duties and ambitions will push them into points of tension, but their commitment to the Claimant’s ascent ties them together.

A GM plays the other inhabitants of the cursed and fractured Empire: nobles, commoners, outlaws, and undead wraiths. The GM presents opportunities, foreshadows consequences, and introduces adversity. They present the challenges that make the player characters’ fight for the throne uncertain and exciting. As a group, you play to find out whether the Claimant can take their throne and what sacrifices must be made along the way.

Rebel Crown has a pretty detailed gameplay loop, re-contextualizing the Downtime and Score parts of Blades into a Recon and Sortie phase, respectively. The group’s goal is laser-focused: you’re trying to put your Claimant on the throne. However, there’s different objectives that you can complete in your goal to restore their rightful title, including finding a way to gain status by building trust, weakening factions that oppose you, and either seizing or destroying holdings that are vital lands within the kingdom.

You can build your own kingdom and Claimant if you wish, but the designers have also created two campaigns with some details already decided, to help speed up your session 0, called Serpent & Oak. You can also check out a quick rules reference and the playbook handouts for free!

Courtiers, by Levi Kornelson.

In this game, players will take on the roles of (competing) courtiers, each of whom is lobbying the royal court in an attempt to promote their local agenda. The game uses the front and back of a single sheet of paper, and requires four players, a stack of index cards, pens, and six-side dice to play.

This is a combination roleplaying-game and boardgame, relying on the randomness of the dice and the placement of index cards in a row to determine what proposals the court passes and what proposals are denied. Each player will pick up a pre-written character and flesh out their specific goals using proposals, and then take turns trying to push for their proposals to pass. The game has a very specific end point - that being that the approval pile has three proposals.

I think Courtiers is good for folks who want a single-session experience of court politics, or perhaps a way to determine how a kingdom changes before diving into what that means for their characters in a much larger setting.

Most Trusted Advisors, by the HORIZON MACHINE.

Execute your cunning plan before your liege executes you.

Hark, ye players of games! Indulge in the merry vice of dice-playing with this comic production, easy to pick up and play with but a quick skim of the rules. The digital manuscript has been crafted by our finest computer artisans to be perfect for light-hearted, madcap one-shots and short campaigns.

There is nary a heroic act to be documented within these pages. In Most Trusted Advisors, you'll one-up your friends' plans with Twists and buy their credulity with Ducats as you compete for your feudal lord's approval. Poison and murder your enemies as the loathsome Blackguard, start duels and wars as the boisterous Marshal, or pick one of four other dastardly playbooks with which to accomplish your wicked schemes.

You can set this game in the provided setting, or create your own. The playbooks are reminiscent of Forged-in-the-Dark games, with action ratings, friends and rivals, and special abilities, but much of what you can do follows the same style of play as Belonging-Outside-Belonging games. This is through the Ducat system, which allows you to gain Ducats through certain (nefarious) actions, and spend Ducats in order get new information, present something new to the fiction, or change the story in a specific way.

If you are looking for a courtly intrigue game with the potential for high camp, this is likely the game for you.

Court of Blades, by A Couple of Drakes.

Court of Blades takes place in the vibrant, fantasy renaissance city-state of Ilrien, in a world populated by scheming nobles, court magicians, and dashing duelists.

As a noble retainer, you will engage in the polite civil warfare of the great families. You will host lavish balls, and manipulate the courts, uncover the plots of your rivals, protect the city from arcane dangers, manage your own intrigues and personal scandals, leverage your reputations, connections, and so much more.

Inspired by infamous warring families like history's Medicis and Pazzis, Shakespeare's Montagues and Capulets, or Game of Thrones' Starks and Lannisters, in Court of Blades you will take on the role of a talented retainer to a newly risen House of the Esultare in the great city of Ilrien. The Esultare, composed of the six Houses Major, are considered to be the most powerful families in the Principalities. Amongst them they have their own pecking order, and every citizen of Ilrien is aware of every house’s position within that order.

We play to find out if our noble retainers can play the Great Game and win it all, or if they'll fall prey to the machinations of their rivals or their own human failings.

In this game you’re not the most important members of a great house, but rather just beneath them. This makes you vital to their success, however, because you have the ability to walk where the noble dare not tread. If you can succeed, you may find yourselves elevated to a true place of power.

This is a great game for whispered secrets behind elaborate fans, masked balls where conversations are held throughout a dance, and eavesdropping happens behind false walls or under lush balconies. There’s also magic involved, and a hidden world that you can exploit in your desire to rise to the top. If you like dramatic storytelling and a romantic setting, this might be the game for you.

Also Check Out...

Political and Social Drama Rec Post

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games-franco · 2 months

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Now at IPR: Border Riding (Deluxe Edition)

This is a game about boundaries, how we mark them and who we include or exclude from them. While inspired by the Common Ridings festivals in the Scottish Borders, this game can be about any community, and take place at any time, in any setting.

Border Riding explores how arbitrary borders can create real long-lasting divisions between communities, and how petty village rivalries can turn into full blown conflicts. By following these communities and their border rituals over time, you will also explore how, in seeking safety from perceived threats, communities can vilify and warmly welcome those that fall outside of a drawn border.

https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Border-Riding-Deluxe-Edition-Print-PDF.html

#ipr remarks #indie ttrpg #new product #indie ttrpgs #ttrpg #gaming #games #solo ttrpg #game design #itch.io

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games-franco · 2 months

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7 Fantasy RPGs to fill the D&D-shaped Hole in your Life

So. It finally happened. Either Hasbro, or Wizards of the Coast, or someone else associated with Dungeons & Dragons finally did something so fucked-up that you've decided to swear it off entirely.

The problem is that for decades, there has been one obvious answer to the question of "What game with Dwarves, Longswords and Wizards in it should we play" and that was D&D, every time. Even their strongest rival in the past couple of decades was just an older version of D&D with a spit shine.

Now you find yourself adrift in a sea of possibility, with no signposts. There are names you've heard, but you have no idea which ones you'd actually be interested in, because you had always just assumed you'd be playing D&D until the heat death of the universe.

So let's take a look at a few games that want to fill that D&D-shaped hole in your gaming life, and examine what they're offering.

Disclaimer: I'm not covering the entire breadth and depth of the TTRPG industry here. I'm specifically going to be covering Fantasy RPGs that should appeal to D&D fans here. So if I didn't cover your favourite indie RPG, sorry. But there has to be a "First step" outside of the D&D bubble, and each of these games should fulfill that need.

The Other "Kitchen Sink" Game: Pathfinder

If you can't bring yourself to keep playing the corporate game, but you still want something that offers as close to that gameplay experience as you can possibly get, your best bet at the time of this writing is probably Pathfinder 2nd Edition.

I say this as someone who very much did not vibe with the original Pathfinder, or its "D&D in space" sister product Starfinder. But at this point, I'd absolutely tell a newcomer to jump into Pathfinder 2E before I recommended they buy any WotC product.

To their credit, the 2nd Edition of Pathfinder does much more to, uh, find its own path by diverging from 3.5 edition and implementing new systems that take it into uncharted territory. The "Two Actions Per Turn" paradigm is often cited by its proponents as being a meaningful improvement over the 5E way of doing things.

The "TTJRPG": Fabula Ultima

One of the biggest success stories of the early 20's was Fabula Ultima from NEED Games in Italy. It came seemingly out of nowhere to win the ENnie Gold Award for Best Game of 2023. Since then it's become notoriously difficult to find in print, though it's still freely available as a PDF.

Fabula Ultima is a "TTJRPG," modelled after Japanese fantasy video games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Phantasy Star, Breath of Fire, etc. While it's firmly planted in the Fantasy genre, its gameplay will also very recognizable to fans of those types of games.

The major benefit of this conceit is that you can probably already picture how combat in FabUlt works in your mind: Two rows of characters take turns jumping and slashing at each other, or casting magical spells to harm, heal, or apply status conditions. There's no concept of "Spacing," but the game still manages to be mechanically intricate with lots of varied class abilities and status effects to apply.

D&D refugees looking for a game where you simply pick a class and fight some monsters, but aren't too particular about how they do that, will find a lot to love here. FabUlt leans much more heavily on storytelling mechanics than D&D does, so players who've been looking for something a bit more "Theater of the Mind" should be well taken care of here.

Final Fantasy Lancer: ICON

Like Fabula Ultima, ICON is a TTRPG that takes heavy inspiration from JRPGs, specifically tactical games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. It's from Massif Press, who also authored the surprise indie Mech combat hit Lancer.

And like Lancer, ICON is a game with two very distinct rulesets: Outside of combat, a "Fiction-first" narrative system inspired heavily by Blades in the Dark; In combat, a grid-based tactical skirmish game reminiscent of D&D 4th Edition. All backed by the gorgeous art of its author Tom Parkinson-Morgan, who also writes and illustrates the comic Kill Six Billion Demons.

ICON separates its "narrative" class system from its combat class system, giving each character two distinct character sheets that come into play at different times. Because those two systems don't have to cross over very much, each can be as intricate or as rules-light as it needs to be to promote the type of gameplay most appropriate for the situation.

The Old-School Gateway Drug: Shadowdark

If you ever took a few steps outside of the walled garden that is D&D in the past few years, you will likely have read or heard of the OSR, or "Old-School Revival/Renaissance." Proponents of the OSR are players who yearn for an older style of Dungeon Crawling Survival Horror game that hearkens back to the early days of D&D, before the players became akin to superheroes.

Shadowdark aims to be a game that bridges the gap to that style of gameplay, without being totally unfamiliar to players who only ever learned 5th Edition mechanics. It's "Old-School gaming, modernized."

Aside from simply being a modern take on a D20 fantasy game, it freshens up gameplay using a mechanic called the "Torch Timer." It turns light into a resource that dwindles in real time. This serves to elevate the tension of the game as every minute that passes is one less minute of light on your torch. And when the torches run out, well... You can probably guess what happens next.

5th Edition with the Serial Numbers Filed Off: Tales of the Valiant

Tell me if you've heard this one before: Wizards of the Coast introduces sweeping changes to its "Open" license model, leading existing 3rd-party content creators to create their own version of an older ruleset to protect the viability of their backlog. It happened in the past, but what are the chances that happens a second time? Ha!

Well... It did happen again. This time, playing the role of the "Paizo" in this scenario is Kobold Press, who loudly declared that they were "Raising the Black Flag" in response. In order to ensure that there would always be a "Core Fantasy" ruleset that would remain compatible with their content, they announced Tales of the Valiant, which would essentially duplicate the 5th Edition ruleset with a bit of a spit shine, in much the same way that Pathfinder did for 3.5 Edition.

Tales of the Valiant will be the game for the D&D player who just wanted a rules refresh of 5th Edition, but also doesn't want to keep throwing money at the corporate hegemony. It should end up being "The 5E you can feel good about supporting," and that matters right now.

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Matt Colville's Big Bet: The MCDM RPG

Kobold Press was not the only publisher of third-party D&D content to have a strong reaction to the OGL fiasco. Unlike Tales of the Valiant however, Matt Colville's response was to announce a fully new Fantasy RPG system, with no expectation of backwards compatibility with any edition of D&D.

MCDM's sights are firmly set on the "Post-Kitchen-Sink" future, and to that end their game is explicitly not trying to be the one game for every possible playstyle. It's Tactical, meaning you'll need a grid to play it on, and it's Heroic, meaning characters should feel powerful, and not like they're constantly one critical hit or failed trap-sensing check away from being decapitated.

This approach might seem like a massive risk considering how insanely powerful 5th Edition became at its peak. But a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign backed by over 30,000 people shows that there is at least an appetite for something new, and that there is a like-minded community of players ready and waiting to join you.

The Critical Role Game: Daggerheart

If the Kobold Press announcement was a shot across the bow, and the MCDM crowdfunder was a bomb dropped, then Daggerheart is a full-blown asteroid, streaking straight towards Wizards of the Coast HQ.

Daggerheart is an original Fantasy RPG from Darrington Press, the publishing arm of the Critical Role media company. That by itself should mean something considering how important CR is to the D&D brand, but there's more to talk about here. Though it superficially resembles D&D in a lot of ways, it has some extremely important differences. Namely, its use of "Powered by the Apocalypse" mechanics such as "Fail Forward" dice rolling and "No Initiative" combat.

While "PbtA" has become somewhat of a loaded term in the D&D community, Critical Role has an opportunity to overcome that stigma with the sheer force of their platform. I've made this case already in the past, but if they were to use their power to do for themselves what they did for 5th Edition, it would be the most significant threat to the Hasbro Hegemony to emerge since Pathfinder. Let alone taking just a slice, Daggerheart has the long-term potential to take the whole damn pie.

And more!

The games I've listed here are all theoretically capable of replacing the Corpo game as your "go-to" long-term game. Not all of them are fully playable as of this writing, but they all represent one possible future for the "Sword and Sorcery" RPG genre.

There are of course a whole plethora of other games out there beyond the limited scope of "Medieval Fantasy" that are just as valid and just as viable, if you're feeling a bit more adventurous.

If you're looking for something explicitly tactical like a miniature skirmish game, but still in the RPG genre, and you're willing to expand your choice of genre beyond Euro-centric Medieval Fantasy even further beyond ICON, you might be interested in Gubat Banwa or the aforementioned Lancer.

If you want a game that promotes a slightly more streamlined, less mechanically-intricate approach to combat while still giving you tons of monsters to kick the shit out of, you might want to check out the "Illuminated by LUMEN" family of games inspired by the games LIGHT and NOVA from Gila RPGs. It might even inspire you to write your own RPG!

If you're more interested in the Old-School Renaissance, you might want to check out Forbidden Lands, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Old-School Essentials, or MÖRK BORG.

If you like the idea of "Old-School Roleplaying" but are also willing to step outside of the fantasy genre into Sci-fi territory, you might be interested in Stars Without Number, its Cyberpunk sister product Cities Without Number, or Mothership.

Finally, if you just want a game that focuses on telling the best story rather than mindlessly killing monsters and acquiring loot, you might want to check out Blades in the Dark, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Girl by Moonlight, Coyote and Crow, and many more Fiction-First games in the Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark genres.

But most importantly: Just play more games! Don't just buy them, play them! The point of this whole exercise is to replace the monopoly with a plurality, for the sake of the health of the tabletop gaming industry.

Because the next time Hasbro lays off a bunch of WotC employees, there should be a much stronger, more diverse industry for them to land in feet-first. We should all want for the people who build the games we love to feel safe in their career choice. Not just for the sake of the ones who are already there, but for future prospective designers and artists who want to make their mark.

It should be viable to be a tabletop game designer outside of just making more D&D stuff forever, because as we've seen, it's not safe to assume that we can all just keep doing the same thing we've been doing and not get bit on the ass by it.

If we want that future, we have to take it into our own hands and build it ourselves. But if there's one group of people that knows about building something very big from very little, it's TTRPG players.

#ttrpg #icon rpg #icon ttrpg #mcdm #pathfinder #fabula ultima #kobold press #tales of the valiant #daggerheart #gaming

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games-franco · 2 months

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Have you Played FIST : ultra edition

by Claymore RPGs

Paranormal Cold War Mercenaries doing jobs for hire

#fist is a blast #ttrpg #table top rpg #tabletop rpg #fist ultra edition #2020s #indie ttrpg #helldivers #helldivers 2

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games-franco · 2 months

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Hello! Finally got the Spectre finished and at least four subclasses ready to go! I’m really glad to have gotten this class done for y’all. It turned out pretty well and is rather flavorful. Hope you enjoy and have some spooky times with this class!

Also a sidenote: Should you choose to multiclass into this class, one of the prerequisites for it is for your character to have died.

[PDF]

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games-franco · 2 months

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An oracle zine with 60+ results per page for any solo RPG

My Zine Month project is up! 🎲🎲

Introducing 'Random Realities', an oracle zine for all your solo RPG needs!

Roll a d66, flip a page, or roll the dice inside the PDF (yup, that's right) and get 60+ oracle results on every page!

Here's a sample page of the zine.

Envision worlds, quests, people, scenes, creatures, items, and more on a glance!

If you're familiar with oracle decks, it's the same principle, but in a convenient zine format.

The PDF comes with a function that allows you to click on the dice (or on the title of any category) and it takes you to another random page!

It's pretty magical!

If you are using the physical version, you can simply flip to a random page, or roll d66 and go to the corresponding page, following the dice results in the bottom right corner.

And it's all there, no need to flip through to find the right table for the right scenario.

The results vary from more abstract words and terms open to interpretation, to more direct and guided results, combined with evocative icons to spark your imagination.

I drew from the 30+ games I've made to collect the most practical and evocative oracles I could devise.

My hope is that you can grab this zine and your favorite system, and jump to an adventure in no time.

If that's your jam, check out the campaign and spread the word! 💗

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games-franco · 2 months

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Not Yet Funded Zinemonth Projects

Even more TTRPG campaigns, but as of posting none of these have hit their funding goal yet! Please check them out and help make these games a reality! Want more? Check out https://zinemonth.spread.name/ and https://crowdfundr.com/spotlight/tabletop-nonstop/

Please feel free to add projects onto this post or shout them out in the replies as well!

#zinemonth2024 #ipr remarks #indie ttrpgs #indie ttrpg #crowdfunding #ttrpg #gaming #games #solo ttrpg #game design

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games-franco · 2 months

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As of the 8th of February 2024, Buried Deep is now 10% funded!

If you like gmless gothic games about family secrets, then this game is for you! It's also a hack of Stealing The Throne by Nick Bate. Back now to get a digital copy for $12AUD and a physical copy for $28AUD (plus shipping).

This campaign is a part of Crowdfundr Thunder and will be running until the 5th of March.

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games-franco · 2 months

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the cheeseburger is here.

this has nothing to do with valentine's day.

get my newest game for PWYW.

the cheeseburger is not making me do this.

here's the link

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games-franco · 2 months

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Welcome to Lemuria!

We just launched a game project on Kickstarter! It's a solo journaling RPG about exploring a strange continent full of eldritch relics, untangling its secrets, and probably getting cursed in a few horrible ways.

Please consider supporting! We're already getting close to the initial goal, after which there are some fun stretch goals!

#ttrpg #kickstarter #solo ttrpg #journaling #horror #gaming #games #indie ttrpg #game design

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games-franco · 2 months

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Physical Irezumi Copies!

While Abbadon has been printed and has either been held up by Chinese New Year or is on a ship at the moment. I thought I'd point out that it's my 2nd printed game. I have a limted amount of print copies of my Caltrop game Irezumi available.

Irezumi is a simple game designed for group play and to take a handful of sessions. The players take on the role of Yakuza with the goal being respect, and power but like Japanese cinema meet a tragic end in the twighlight of their criminal career.

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games-franco · 2 months

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Have you played GREEN SKIES ?

By @smallredrobin13games

A solo solarpunk game about a sentient building caring for it's residents.

#tabletop rpg #ttrpg #indie ttrpg

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games-franco · 2 months

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Play Report: Tacticians of Ahm #2

Tonight, I ran the second session of an ongoing playtest of an upcoming starter Tacticians of Ahm adventure I'm hoping to get out in the February update (the game is itchfunding now). So, here's a play report (and here's a link to the first play report)!

After the chaos of the griffin attack on the Academy's field day, everyone went back inside the Academy walls for safety. Both griffins, including the one carrying Von Lopesbane, flew off to the northeast, after getting hit by enough attacks from the professors and student tacticians below to be thoroughly annoyed.

Inside the walls, the party saw a number of scouts coming in from the north, west, and eastern roads, all with the same news: sightings and reports of imperial soldiers (even several skyriders - the empress's griffin rider legion) attacking Ahmian citizens - all while proclaiming to be fighting back against the corrupt1on!

Groups of Tacticians and their advisors began to form parties to go out and address these various reports - after all what's a better final exam than the real thing? Professor Dana Turr, an elderly naga woman and the Senior Term headmaster, gave the group an option (since their advisor, Von Lopesbane, was missing): Find Von Lopesbane on their own and it will earn them a guaranteed early graduation and exemption from the remaining weeks of exercises. The other Tacticians on site at the Academy are spread too thin with more violent reports nearby, but she can't abandon Von Lopesbane and if the imperial army is involved, this could be serious enough to actually mean he's in serious risk.

The group agreed and were sent off to Quartermaster Bormos to get field equipment before heading out: 5 rations, a healing potion, and a piece of equipment (under 25g) of their choice. Both Tacticians took Leather Armor. Quablin bought both of them backpacks for the road.

The group headed out, into the region northeast of the academy in search of Von Lopesbane.

The party was somewhat familiar with this region from their time at the Academy. To the north was Four Families, a collection of four family farms all housed very close to one another - the road eerily quiet. To the east, the village of Dodona - smoke rising up from that direction in the distance. To the far north, ruins of an old war watchtower, formally abandoned for centuries.

Helios pushed for the group to head to Four Families and then east towards Dodona. The road was strangely quiet on the way (no random encounters were rolled).

They arrived at the farmhouses and found it, again, strangely quiet. They approached the nearest house and a halfling farmer whispered at them out of the shrubs - There are soldiers in the house! They attacked the other houses and his family only just made it out in time.

Helios approached the house and tried to convince the soldiers inside that she was a higher ranking officer, but the soldiers were assured in their mission, claiming Helios to likely be an agent of the corrupti0n. Frustrated, Helios kicked down the door and rushed in!

Over a 4 round fight, the Tacticians faced 1 Lietenant (EL2) and 2 Spearman (EL1). Through a clever use of Stupor to stun two of the enemies followed by a perfect backstab from Helios the group took the fight but both were just a strike away from falling. The gained 1 XP, 1 RP for their combo and leveled their Relationship to Level 1.

They questioned the defeated troops, you seemed out of sorts, babbling about corrupt1on, being far from home, and the vile nature of the White Walled City - almost as if the concepts of D4RKW3LL and Ahm were swapped in their mind.

Next time, the party travels onward!

[Design notes: We were testing some changes/expansions here to overland travel as it is currently written in the published rulebook. It's more of a node-based pointcrawl than a traditional hexcrawl (like the FF Tactics overworld map). The other thing I'm focusing on going forward in playtests in holding myself better to the digital nature of the world and highlighting those aspects (and providing guidance in the rulebook for GMs to know how to do the same).](edited)

Tacticians of Ahm is itchfunding now and it currently at it's lowest price (just $15 USD) with monthly updates coming from February to September of this year (and hopefully beyond)!

#ttrpg #ttrpgs #indie ttrpg #rpg #fantasy #play report #playtesting #tacticians of ahm #tactics #gaming

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