#Fantasy Roleplaying Game

[oldschoolfrp]

The premiere issue of Arcane "The Roleplaying Magazine" (December 1995) included this preview of FRUP - an "almost-ready" RPG by Hogshead Publishing's founder James Wallis "due in February '96." The game was set in a satirical fantasy world that somehow received copies of the AD&D rulebooks (or a legally distinct equivalent), revered them as holy texts, and built a society around them governed by "rules lawyers" with a culture of murdering monsters for their experience points. "FRUP" is their attempt to pronounce FRP, the old term for fantasy roleplaying games that preceded RPG.

The cover art shown is by Les Edwards, with interior art by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood and Ralph Horsley. I can't find any additional information about FRUP online. It seems it never was released in any form, a casualty of Hogshead's financial troubles around this time.

#FRUP #Hogshead Publishing #James Wallis #Arcane magazine #Les Edwards #Lee Brimmicombe-Wood #Ralph Horsley #RPG #gaming history #gaming humor #fantasy roleplaying game #Lee Brimmicombe Wood #1990s

[probablybadrpgideas]

The Monster Manual but it's blatantly written by the monsters

#rpg #roleplaying game #D&D #fantasy #meta

[bacchuschucklefuck]

#dimension 20 #fantasy high junior year #fhjy #fhjy spoilers #riz gukgak #kipperlilly copperkettle #drawing riz in the lava like damn it must be fucking up his hair. this is the kind of priorities I have in art #also kipperlilly being whimsyless is SO funny in a dnd game. like girl this is the do insane shit with no consequence game #freaks?? in my Roleplay Power Fantasy Game???? no way dude what the hells!!!!!!

[legionofmyth]

Forbidden Lands - Introduction

Curious about Forbidden Lands? 🎲 Dive into our new video for an in-depth look at this dark fantasy #TTRPG by Free League! Whether you're a seasoned adventurer or new to the RPG scene, this game has something for everyone. Don't miss it! 🐉🛡️ #ForbiddenLands #RPGIntro

Forbidden Lands – Core Game A Simple Rescue – (Intro Adventure) Discover the captivating world of Forbidden Lands, a dark fantasy tabletop RPG by Free League Publishing. Watch now to dive into its rich gameplay Unlock the mysteries of Forbidden Lands in this must-watch video! We delve into this gripping tabletop RPG by Free League Publishing, covering everything from the open-world exploration to…

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#Adventure Game #Character Creation #Dark Fantasy #Fantasy Roleplaying Game #fantasy rpg #Forbidden Lands #Forbidden Lands Basics #forbidden lands gameplay #Forbidden Lands Guide #forbidden lands review #forbidden lands rpg #free league publishing #game mechanics #How to Play Forbidden Lands #Introduction to Forbidden Lands #legion of myth #Open World RPG #roleplaying game #RPG Introduction #tabletop RPG #TTRPG

[prokopetz]

Ten inessential worldbuilding features for local communities in your fantasy RPG:

A grievance or conflict of interest with a neighbouring community which the community's members feel much more strongly about than the issue's magnitude really warrants

A substance or commodity important to everyday life with no local source, and the complicated and inconvenient arrangement the community has made to obtain it from outside sources

A local practice or custom whose original motivation has been rendered obsolete by changing circumstances, and which is now carried forward out of tradition

Something that's technically illegal, but everyone does it on the sly anyway, with enforcement of its illegality being reserved for people the community's leaders want to mess with for unrelated reasons

An obscure piece of trivia or local history which the community's members regard as obvious and widely known, to the extent of treating outsiders with contempt for revealing their ignorance of it

Some undertaking or realm of achievement in which the community isn't particularly exceptional, but which the community's members believe they're the best around at as a point of civic pride

A mostly harmless thing that nobody talks about because its existence or some facet of its historical context is regarded as an embarrassment to the community

A particular prank that's become traditional to play on visitors to the community, and which occasionally gets taken further than is strictly appropriate

A specific area of the setting's history where what the community's members insist really happened is wildly at odds with the accepted version of events

A genuinely dangerous circumstance that everyone treats with casual disregard because it's always been there, and only a damn fool would actually get hurt by it anyway

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #game design #worldbuilding #fantasy #tropes #swearing

[anim-ttrpgs]

Help Save the World of TTRPGs and Their Creators.

Okay I’m being a little dramatic, but at the same time I’m pretty serious. This is a call to action, and the livelihoods of myself and lots of other people, many of them (like myself) disabled, are depending on it. This is a post about why, what you can do about it, and (perhaps least often answered) how.

This post is actually an accompaniment to another discussion by someone else. If you don’t want to listen to a 90-minute in-depth discussion of much of what I’m about to tell you, you can just keep reading. Otherwise, click here or here and listen to this either before or after you read this post. (They’re the same thing, just different sources.)

If you have ever made or reblogged posts urging people to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox, you should be willing to at least give a try to other TTRPGs besides D&D5e for much the same principle reasons. I’m not telling you you have to hate D&D5e, and I’m not telling you you have to quit D&D5e, I’m just asking you to try some other games. If you don’t like them, and you really want to go back to D&D5e, then go back to D&D5e. But how can you really know you won’t like other games if you have literally never tried them? This post is a post about why and how to try them. If you’re thinking right now that you don’t want to try them, I urge you to look below to see if any of your reasons for not wanting to try them are covered there. Because the monopoly that WotC’s D&D5e has on TTRPGs as a whole is bad for me as a game designer, and it’s bad for you as a game player. It’s even bad for you if you like D&D5e. A fuller discussion of the why and how this is the case can be found in the links above, but it isn’t fully necessary for understanding this post, it’ll just give you a better perspective on it.

If you’re a D&D5e player, I’m sure at some point or another, you’ve been told “play a different game”, and it must get frustrating without the context of why and how. This post is here to give you the why and how.

[The following paragraph has been edited because the original wording made it sound like we think all weird TTRPGs suck.]

Before that though, one more thing to get out of the way. I'm going to level with you. There’s a lot of weird games out there.

You are gonna see a lot of weird TTRPGs when you take the plunge. Many of them try to completely reinvent what a TTRPG even is, and some fail spectacularly, others really do even up doing something very interesting even if they don't end up being what a core TTRPG player wants. But not every indie RPG is a Bladefish, lots and lots of them are more 'traditional' and will feel very familiar to you, I promise. (And you might even find that you like the weird experimental bladefish type ones, these are usually ideal for one-session plays when your usual group can't play your usual game for any reason.)

You're also going to probably see a lot of very bad games, and man have I got some stories of very bad games, but for now I'm just saying to make sure you read the reviews, or go through curators (several of which will be listed below), before you buy.

Now that that is out of the way, I’m going to go down a list of concerns you may have for why not, and then explain the how.

“I don’t want to learn a whole new set of rules after I already spent so much time learning D&D5e.”

Learning a new set of rules is not going to be as hard as you think. Most other TTRPGs aren’t like that. D&D5e is far on the high end of the scale for TTRPGs being hard and time-consuming to learn and play. If you’ve only played D&D5e, it might trick you into thinking that learning any TTRPG is an overwhelmingly time-consuming task, but this is really mostly a D&D5e problem, not a TTRPG problem as a whole.

“D&D5e has all of these extra online tools to help you play it.”

So what? People have been playing TTRPGs without the help of computers for 50 years. To play a well-designed TTRPG you won’t need a computer. Yes, even if you're bad at math. There are some TTRPGs out there that barely even use math.

“I’m too invested in the narrative and characters of my group’s current ongoing D&D5e campaign to switch to something else.”

There are other games, with better design made by better people for less money, that are the same kind of game as D&D5e, that your current characters, lore, and plot will fit right into and do it better. And no, it's not just Pathfinder, there's others.

“I can’t afford to play another TTRPG.”

You probably can. If you’ve only played D&D5e, you might have been made to think that TTRPGs are a very expensive hobby. They aren’t. D&D5e is actually uniquely expensive, costing more than 3x more than the next most expensive TTRPG I can think of right now. Even on the more expensive end, other TTRPG books will cost you no more than $60, most will cost you less than $20, and a whole lot of them are just free. If you somehow still can’t afford another TTRPG, come to the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book club mentioned below, nominate the game, and if it wins the vote we will straight up buy it for you.

(By the way, if you had any of the above concerns about trying other games besides D&D5e, that really makes it sound like you are in a textbook abusive relationship with D&D5e. This is how abusers control their partners, and how empires control their citizens, by teaching you to think that nothing could ever get any better, and even though they treat you bad, the Other will treat you even worse.)

“If I don’t play D&D5e, which TTRPG should I play?”

That’s a pretty limited question to be asking, because there will be no one TTRPG for everything. And no, D&D5e is not the one TTRPG for everything, Hasbro’s marketing team is just lying to you. (Pathfinder and PbtA are not the one system for everything either!) Do you only play one video game or only watch one movie or only read one book? When you finish watching an action movie like Mad Max, and then you want to watch a horror movie, do you just rewind Mad Max and watch it over again but this time you act scared the whole time? No, you watch a different movie. I’m asking you to give the artistic medium of TTRPGs the same respect you would give movies.

“I want to play something besides D&D5e, but my friends won’t play anything else!”

I have several answers to this.

Try showing them this post.

If that doesn’t work: Make them. Put your foot down. This works especially well if you are the DM. Tell them you won’t run another session of D&D5e until they agree to give what you want to do at least one try instead of always doing only what they want to do. This is, like, playing 101. We learned this in kindergarten. If your friend really wants to play something else, you should give their game a try, or you’re not really being a very good friend.

If that doesn’t work, find another group. This doesn’t even mean that you have to leave your existing group. A good place to start would be the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club which will be mentioned and linked below. You can also go to the subreddit of any game you’re interested in and probably meet people there who have the same problem you do and want to put together a group to play something other than D&D5e. You might get along great with these people, you might not, but you won’t know until you try. Just make sure to have a robust “session zero” so everyone is on the same page. This is a good practice for any group but it is especially important for a group made of players you’ve just met.

“I only watch actual plays.”

Then watch actual plays of games that aren’t D&D5e. These podcasts struggle for the same reasons that indie RPGs struggle, because of the brand recognition and brand loyalty D&D5e has, despite their merit. I don’t watch actual plays, or else I would be able to list more of them. So, anyone who does watch actual plays, please help me out by commenting on this post with some non-D&D5e actual plays you like. And please do me a favor and don’t list actual plays that only play one non-D&D5e system, list ones that go through a variety of systems. The first one I can think of is Tiny Table.

“I can just homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e.”

Even though I want to, I’m not going to try and argue that you can’t actually homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e. Instead, I’m going to ask you why you’re buying two $50 rulebooks just to throw away half the pages. In most other good RPGs, you don’t need to change the rules to make them fun, they’re fun right out the box.

“But homebrewing D&D5e into any kind of game is fun! You can homebrew anything out of D&D5e!”

Firstly, I promise that this is not unique to D&D5e. Secondly, then you would probably have more fun homebrewing a system that gives you a better starting point for reaching your goal. Also, what if I told you that there are entire RPG systems out there that are made just for this? There are RPG systems that were designed for the purpose of being a toolbox and set of materials for you to work with to make exactly the game you want to make. Some examples are GURPS, Savage Worlds, Basic RolePlaying, Caltrop Core, and (as much as I loathe it) PbtA.

“I’m not supporting WotC’s monopoly because I pirate all the D&D5e books.”

Then you’re still not supporting the smaller developers that this monopoly is crushing, either.

Now, here’s the how. Because I promise you, there’s not just one, but probably a dozen other RPGs out there that will scratch your exact itch.

Here’s how to find them. This won’t be a comprehensive list because I’ve already been typing this for like 3 hours already. Those reading this, please go ahead and comment more to help fill out the list.

First, I’m gonna plug one of my own major projects, because it’s my post. The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club. It’s a discord server that treats playing TTRPGs like a book club, with the goal of introducing members to a wide variety of games other than D&D5e. RPGs are nominated by members, then we hold a vote to decide what to read and play for a short campaign, then we repeat. There is no financial, time, or schedule investment required to join this book club, I promise it is very schedule-friendly, because we assign people to different groups based of schedule compatibility. You don’t have to play each campaign, or any campaign, you can just read along and participate in discussion that way. And if you can’t afford to buy the rulebook we’re going to be reading, we will make sure you get a PDF of it for free. That is how committed we are to getting non-D&D5e RPGs into people’s hands. Here is an invite link.

Next, there are quite a few tumblr blogs you can follow to get recommendations shown to you frequently.

@indierpgnewsletter

@indie-ttrpg-of-the-day

@theresattrpgforthat

@haveyouplayedthisttrpg

@indiepressrevolution

Plenty of podcasts, journalists, and youtubers out there do in-depth discussions of different systems regularly, a couple I can think of off the top of my head are:

Storyteller Conclave (I’m actually going to be interviewed live on this show on April 10th!)

Seth Skorkowsky

Questing Beast

The Gaming Table

Rascal News

Lastly, you can just go looking. Browse r/rpg, drivethrurpg.com, indie press revolution, and itch.io.

Now, if you really want to support me and my team specifically Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is going to launch on Kickstarter on April 10th and we need all the help we can get. Set a reminder from the Kickstarter page through this link.

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, there’s plenty of ways to get one!

Subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

Donate to our ko-fi and send us an email with proof that you did, and we’ll email you back with the full Eureka prerelease package with the most updated version at the time of responding! (The email address can be found if you scroll down to the bottom of our website.)

We also have merchanise.

#dnd #dnd5e #dnd 5e homebrew #dungeons and dragons #d&d #d&d 5e #dungeons and dragons 5e #dnd 5e #5e #homebrew #dungeons & dragons #critical role #crit role #dimension 20 #actual play #matt mercer #wizards of the coast #wotc #hasbro #ttrpgs #ttrpg #ttrpg community #ttrpg tumblr #tabletop #roleplay #roleplaying #roleplaying games #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop role playing game #fantasy rpg

[vintagerpg]

There is, I think, no arguing that contemporary genre art has a character distinct from previous decades. I also think that while there are big shifts in aesthetics somewhat aligning with each decade of the 20th century, here in the 21st things have definitely slowed down — I feel like the look of genre art has fossilized somewhat in the last 20 years. I don’t have a good explanation for why. Sometimes I wonder if I’m blinded by nostalgia, and that there really aren’t any obvious objective differences at all.

Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s (2023) is a compelling argument, I think, that there ARE definite differences. The book, by Adam Rowe (and spinning out of his social media accounts dedicated to, well, ’70s science fiction art) looks at both artists and thematic categories of art from the period, mostly from paperback covers, and offers commentary and historical context in the text. The result is startling: a body of work by a variety of artists working in their own styles that nevertheless seems visually unified. With the exception of a couple outliers, this stuff all feels of the ’70s. The fact that there are some inclusions from both the ’60s and ’80s makes this even clearer.

I think the most interesting thing about this is how bizarre some of the ’70s art seems to be. A lot of these artists appear to be entirely off the leash, delivering work they WANTED to produce rather than what they were directed to produce (you can see a shift toward clearly pairing the cover art with the content of the book in the later part of the decade). There was also more money in the work, then, so speed wasn’t quite so big a part of the equation as it is now.

And, greater questions of genre art aside, Worlds Beyond Time is still a mesmerizing collection, worthy of your time even if you just want to feed pictures to your eyeballs.

#roleplaying game #tabletop rpg #dungeons & dragons #rpg #d&d #ttrpg #Science Fiction #Fantasy #Art #noimport

[tabletopresources]

Darren Tan

Check out Tabletop Gaming Resources for more art, tips, and tools for your game!

#call of cthulhu #lovecraft #cthulhu #tabletop rpg #rpg #tabletop gaming #pen & paper #roleplayer #roleplaying games #games #inspiration.pen & paper games #dnd #d&d #pathfinder #dungeons & dragons #dungeons and dragons #fantasy rpg #horror rpg #encounter

[pbbeta24]

I haven't posted anything here for a long time, but hey, I am actually doing some art for the Cloud Empress – the ecological science fantasy TTRPG inspired by Nausicaa, Fullmetal Alchemist and Dune (among other things), and right now is the last week to back it on kickstarter! Don't miss out on it!

#ttrpg #kickstarter #science fantasy #roleplaying games #nausicaa #illustration

[thefugitivesaint]

Luis Royo, ''Magia i Miecz'' (Magic & Sword), #5, 1995 Source

#luis royo #spanish artists #fantasy art #polish roleplaying games #magazine covers #what is this woman doing?

[callumogden]

I made a set of Tolkien inspired fantasy maps of real-world locations including Scotland, the UK and Ireland, Europe, New England and North America for fun but turns out people like using them in their games so, here's how you can find them!

You can download copies of all these maps for free with or without labels for printing or use in your TTRPGs over on my Tumblr page here:

Fantasy Maps in a Tolkien Style

You can also buy prints of these maps on my Redbubble page :

If you would like to use these in a commercial project, drop me a DM and I'd love to chat!

#Maps #Tolkien #cartography #middle earth #lotr #fantasy maps #D&D #dnd #pathfinder #ttrpg #map making #hobbits #shire #rpg #roleplaying game #gimp #mountains #Scotland #UK #America #New England #Ireland #Europe #scottish #jrr tolkien #lord of the rings #the hobbit #mapmaking #digital art

[probablybadrpgideas]

Circle of protection against capitalism

#rpg #roleplaying games #D&D #fantasy #spell idea #the best part is when you post it it doubles as “summon discourse”

[umbraldame]

My friends are making a ttrpg where you can play as monster mystery investigators. Needless to say I've been having a blast designing monster girls! This cute little murder blanket here is the Thing From Beyond, an alien shafeshifter with very particular dietary restrictions. (It's people!!) It's just one of the several playable monsters that Eureka has to offer. The TFB is quite special as it's a Eureka exclusive creation and based heavily off of great movie monsters like The Thing, The Blob, and many more!

#eureka: investigative urban fantasy #eureka #rpg #monsters #coc #allied forces #roleplaying #tabletop #ttrpg #monster girls #ttrpgs #ttrpg art #indie ttrpg #ttrpg community #indie #indie games #fantasy #doodles #oc

[redxdesign]

#art #aiart #cyberpunk #urban #cyberpunk2077 #scifi #fantasy #electro #techno #tron #cityscape #futuristic #modern #drew_struzan #mattepainting #synthwave #RP #roleplay #muse #muse inspo #inspo #rph #lol #8bit #retro #gaming #game #vintage #sega #snes

[mischiev]

A new random artefact just for the fun of drawing disgusting organic clumps.

#rpg #roleplaying game #rpg art #fantasy rpg #concept art #concept artist #items concept #item design #art #artist on tumblr #digital art #digital painting #illustration #my art #artist #original art

[prokopetz]

When I think of musical genres associated with standard fantasy species, it's probably elf rock and orc metal, but gnome music is definitely gnomecore. Gnomes just feel like they'd be about -core.

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #dungeons & dragons #d&d #fantasy #tropes #music #gnomes #the genre of music associated with goblins is also called 'goblin' #not goblin anything #just goblin