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anim-ttrpgs · 1 month

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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.

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emmebearpaw · 5 days

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This just in. At this rate I doubt I'm ever going to finish my OC smut fic so guess who's just going to post the unfinished thing instead of making it rot in my literal notes app forever. Anyways uh. Is it proof read. No. Did I stop, 1 paragraph into the actual make out scene. Anyways I guess it's context time. Which will be above the cut. Congrats it got too long I put it below cut. Because if you follow me I'm going to make you read about my little fuckers. I have more, I could make you read about all of them. You learn about 2. Fic will contain: vampirism, lead up to public sex (they were going to be fucking in the woods!). And also someone's first time writing smut. Please stick around. Also, the one comment I got on a very early version of some of this is that Atsuko doesn’t sound very interested. They are. I promise they are, they are just also a nerd who was initially hoping to not enter a state of brain shut down due to lack of blood because they wanted to write. This is not safe or sane but it is consensual.

Anyways let's start with the info they both share: They are both nebulous TTRPG OCs now, they have been dragged through about 5 universes (starting with an original universe that was very Shintoism inspired, hence the Japanese names) at this point but now they are in, some sort of DND-ish type fantasy world. No I am not playing them, I am not playing any TTRPGs because I don't have a group (like half my friends are in one but they don't need/want more players) and I have roleplay anxiety. Anyways, moving on to their individual Qualities. Atsuko (They/them): Elven wizard, likely Order of Scribes if talking DnD subclass. Approximate human age would be like, mid to late 20s? Maybe early 30s. Probably like, 5'9. They are really more of a researcher than a combatant but hey, magic is also a large interest of theirs and thus cast fireball. They have been working on creating as comprehensive an encyclopedia on religions as they can. They believe that in order to choose a religion, one should be able to compare the options, know what they believe, structure, holidays, symbols good and bad. They couldn't find one. They are on a fucking odyssey to decide if they are religious or not. Atsuko is interested in finding out if they are because their mother finds significant comfort in faith for dealing with the fucking bloodline curse the rest of the family is afflicted with. "Wait what bloodline curse" Watch me make up lore. Yeah so like, a portal to the feywild can be made anywhere the energy is right. This is usually places like, a forest, a hill, in a circle of mushrooms, etc. Fey also thrive best in these areas, hence why fey are not diffuse, but instead congregated around portals. Nothing stops people from having the correct energy(tm) make up to be a fey portal. However, the creation of a fey portal in a person (which occurs usually before age 1 ish when a person starts to gain a personality), usually results in their soul pulled through it the next time they sleep, which results in a small portion of SIDS cases throughout this magical world. Elves don't sleep. Which mean they often live. However, Elves with Portal-itis (i did not come up with a name) are still, you know, fucking Fey portals, and thus they are just in uh, elevated amounts of Fey danger for their entire lifespan. This usually results in them inevitably getting fucked over by a fey in the normal ways you've probably heard of (loss of their identity/soul, murder, the works). Yeah this is genetic. Congrats Atsuko's mother for being the one person in the family to dodge it. So Atsuko spent most of their childhood basically stuck inside of their mostly fey proofed house with their grandma and uncle. So that sucks. Anyways, Atsuko was bored out of their fucking mind, because like, you run out of books eventually, and managed to make themself a semi decent contract with a fey named Chiyo. In exchange for Atsuko giving Chiyo the life force energy they need to live (and like, regular food and shelter), Chiyo would help plug the portal, basically stake a claim on Atsuko so other fey don't bother. Other great features: been anemic for decades. yada yada eventually Atsuko started wandering. Anyways this was way longer than I intended. Look at Human!Atsuko, thanks picrew.

Chiyo: She/her: Fey, her class is fucking bite you I guess, she's active in combat but is not really a class. Because she's Atsuko's "familiar". Chiyo is uh, nebulous kind of fey. I don't know what she is, I made it up. She has various abilities, she can shapeshift, she needs to eat life force energy found in human bodily fluids, she has doll joints. She can also taste human emotions as flavor. This is her fey brain’s best way to understand emotion. I do have a lot of emotions mapped onto flavors for her (she describes Atsuko as tasting bad. Atsuko there tastes like blueberries and oregano). She usually is in the form of a fox somewhere between a red fox and fennec fox, or a human gijinka to anthro (yeah atsuko is a furry dw) of that form. Atsuko has been passing this fey off as their familiar for, so long, which is why she's usually a fox form. Anyways her backstory is she super got run out of the feywild for unclear reasons and basically had to make a deal or die. The two are now in a normal relationship: married and having sex but neither have the emotional intelligence to realize they are in love. I've never made a good depiction of Chiyo and her design has gotten harder to picrew so please close your eyes and imagine. A golden and white fox, turned into a slightly uncanny humanoid doll. Hollow, you can see strings in the joints. Can reduce the animal features, can not transform into a non-doll humanoid, the doll features will remain. This is my best picrew.

Anyways fic time --------------------------------------------

It was a few hours into night watch when Chiyo decided to begin the pacing. Hopping down from whatever person way blessed with the unlucky gift of the disguised fey deciding to make them their pillow for the night and just. Pacing. It was sort of fun in a way. Sitting by the fire. Watching her squirm. Enjoying a few more minutes of your lucidity before the hunger saw time take your feather right from your hands. If there wasn’t more reason to be thankful you didn’t have to sleep. Though you suppose you wouldn’t be in this mess if you did.

You’d be long dead after all. Taken by something else as its delicious reward.

Your false familiar whines as she licks your wrist. You may have chosen your beast but well. You don’t make a deal with a fey without a few concessions. Your head rushes as always as you quietly pace away from the low fire. Chiyo’s small paws scamper alongside you, racing you out of camp and into the night air.

You were barely 30 feet out of camp before the sounds of snapping were unbearable. You asked for her to transform before she fed off you, of course, but the noise. The noise the noise. If her bones weren’t already morphing you would break her bones for her. Crush them to dust and-

“You probably shouldn’t transform this close to everyone else. It’ll be a pain if they wake up.” Your mouth says without you. You are thinking of blood.

The fox-doll sniggered as her vocal cords reformed, and when the creature was satisfied teased: “What? Worried about your friends getting jealllouss??”

“I’m worried about us both getting blown up by whatever spell they decide to aim at the entity, covered in blood, pinning their acquaintance to a tree.”

“You’re no fun”

“And yet you’re the one who led me out of camp instead of just pouncing.”

“Because I respect your taste” A bone snaps into a new place. The spine was always loud. “Even if I think it would be more exciting if it wasn’t just u-“

“Breach of contract.” You take off your coat. The night air is cold against your exposed neck.

“Yeah okay okayyyyy. I get it. No feeding on anyone else. But what if they just wat-“

“Are you hungry or not?” You press your back against a steady tree and sit, in case you feel unsteady in the minutes to come.

You looked down at what was once your false fox, body shifted and morphed into a bipedal form. Her fangs still as sharp as ever, and ears just as big and yet. Well, there was certainly a reason you advised her to not take humanoid form in town. The holes in her joints were obvious, revealing the long spindly strings that seemed to make up her insides. Allowed her segmented fingers to reach up and brush the hair away from your mouth, lingering just a moment to long as she looked up to you. Face close enough you could smell the sweetness of her breath.

“May I bite you now?” She asked. You knew she had to. You tried to play with it once. See when your loyal companion would pounce without command.

Well trained dogs need a reason to— “bite me”.

The “t” had hardly graced your lips before she latched to your neck like a wolf after its prey.

The first wave of blood to leave your veins always made your head spin the most. It wasn’t as if you ever did anything to dull the pain and Chiyo’s teeth were just as sharp as she always kept them.

Your head was definitely pounding more than normal tonight though. You panted, breathing in the smell of your iron before asking, “Are you charming me again?”

If she had ever bothered to answer that, you had never been conscious enough to hear her response to that question.

The facsimile gasped for air. Its pale velvet face sullied by the dribbling blood as you winced once more. Neck raw and warm and wet and—

She had definitely charmed you. Your heart was pounding as your blood ran thin once again. With a moan— a sigh, with a sigh you close your eyes. This was moving frankly too fast. As much as the thought of her excited you, now wasn’t the time. New thought, new thought… ah yes. You were working on compiling your notes before this. You had managed to sample various common foods eaten during the autumn lunar festival of—

Her hands running along your back snapped you out of a thought on the ceremonial purpose of spiced rice dough. Fangs dislodging for a moment as she looked you in the eyes to state, “Stop thinking about lunar cycles or whatever. You taste like shit.”

“I’m thinking about the symbolism of colors in the dough from the other day actually.”

The doll laughed at you, joints creaking ever so slightly as she separates from you, “Fascinating topic. You can tell me all about it after I’m finished sucking you dry?”

A slight “Mmm…” was your form of a whine as her heat left the crook of your neck, once your brain managed to find words once more you responded: “Don’t eat too much again, please?” A please is polite. A please can help to paper over the shudder in your body as she reaches forward to collect a drop of blood from your neck with those fingers.

“But I’m still hungryyyy” she whined. Eyes seemingly warbling. “You would deny your loyal companion a full meal? Hmm. What would we call that? Ohh, right. A breach, of, con-tract.” Her fingers walked across, dancing around the sensitive spot as you two had done so many times before.

“I wasn’t saying you can’t eat more. I was trying to tell you that you could have a bit more? I’m just—” You shake your head, just skip to the explanation rather than the correction. “I need to be able to stand up without falling this time.”

“Well. I think I’m hungrier than just a little more.” Your face is so warm. “If you want my little ol’ stomach filled without me drinking more… we can always—“ She flicks her tongue. If only if only if only-

“They’d hear us you know.” You two were, what, 60 feet from camp? As much as you felt the air get ever colder against your warmer, warmer, warmer skin… “We can try and find a better spot.” You proposed. Surely there had to be another spot than the one you scouted while gathering firewood, further away, line of sight.

“So the only reason we can’t have fun is your worried about screaming?”

…when she put it like that…

“I— yes? That’s the only concern. Really we can just move and—“ you were scooped up by the arms by your small fox, her shiny porcelain skin scratching against the tree as she dragged you to your feet against it. You looked down to your Chiyo, running your fingers along the fur of her ears to keep your mind off the snap and stretch of the bones you were sat upon.

The fox licked her lips as the leg you sat upon seemed to settle, morphed to allow you to straddle it comfortably and yet… from this distance you could see all the tiny joints that ran through her face, your finger fluttering through her hair as you lean into the moment.

Then you blink. “I thought you wanted to have sex?” You vaguely gesture at, the both of you. You were both as clothed as you normally were (which, admittedly for Chiyo was rather sparse due to the whole shape shifting thing), and, well, “Figured you were going to eat me out.”

She shifted closer, pinning you against the tree as her lips nearly brushed against yours, her sudden motion pressing against

She shifted closer, moving away from your grasp on her with a slight roll of the hip, her knee pressing up into you as you respond with a simple “Ohh-hh”

She snickered at the way your breath hitched with so little, “Awww, we’ve barely even started and you’re already making noise…” she trailed off, pulling at the waist of your trousers with an inquisitive look before asking “I thought you said we couldn’t have sex unless it was quiet. Besides, how am I gonna stop you from waking everyone up if I’m down there?”

You sighed as you rose to your toes to pull your pants off, shuffling them off one leg at a time in the downbeat. Your heart pounding as it tried to get your head the blood enough blood to not tip over as you pulled the second leg off. An arm quickly grabbed at you, as if she was jealous the earth may try to claim your lust before she could if you fell. You fumbled for a moment, words stuck on your tongue, and yet, before you could even form the words she answered, “I can always charm you to keep you upright too, if that’s what that silly lil brain of yours is trying to ask.”

(Eyes sparkle with a “holy shit I love you” sort of energy)

“I thought you already charmed me?”

She laughs at you. “I knew you were into it but, sheesh, you got wet so fast you thought it was magic?” Try to retort, she presses a finger to your lips and asks if you want her to charm you, you say not immediately but yes. “Can I kiss you?” You nod and she once again launches forward and suck suck

————— Chiyo told you once that the taste in her mouth was similar to a “blue berry”. The sweet tinge of her tongue mixing with yours. The sour that mixed in as she nipped on your lip before stopping your squeak with her tongue once more.

#my post #my work #oc tag #atsuko #chiyo

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toskarin · 1 year

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toskarin of the askbox, on a more serious topic, I worry i might be becoming a femcel because all around me are happy couples and I feel nothing but jealousy and contempt when they're happy together around me. I haven't a clue how to even start making friends let alone finding a girlfriend, and I don't know what to do at this point. What should a dumb lesbian like me do in such a situation? :(

taking this at face value, here's some advice (just remember that I'm not your therapist, I'm like your neighbour's older sister at best)

jokes about femcels aside, it's the thought loop of it all that quickly becomes a problem. "learned helplessness" as a term has some baggage to it, but in matters of social dynamics, it's still important to fight back against giving up

the first thing to establish with yourself is that you aren't incapable of making friends or anything like that: you're having difficulty doing it and don't necessarily know the ins and outs of doing it, which is very normal

you're feeling bad about all of that, which is also very normal, and without an outlet, that makes you feel bad about others when they seem to be finding success with ease (which, as you might have gotten from the pattern here, is also normal)

the second thing you need to establish internally is that people are so much nicer, on the whole, than your anxieties would tell you. the internet does a lot to blow up the loudest, cruellest, and least considerate people. the median person isn't like that, and lots of them have grappled with similar feelings, whether or not they show it

anyway, let's get into it

"how do I make friends" and "how do I find a girlfriend" are very abstract problems, so lingering on them without breaking them into steps can make it seem completely inscrutable. you could spend forever on it and come up empty-handed, and a lot of people do

instead, a good place to start would be "how do I meet people" and "how can I hang out with people"

are there any events near you that you'd be comfortable going to? if so, that could simplify things a bit. bonus points if it's something specifically gay. lots of people struggle to make friends outside of work and school as adults, and because of that, there's lots of people who arrange casual group hangouts (sometimes finding these is as easy as searching it on google)

if not, maybe you'd rather check online for "small table" events, like ttrpgs, book clubs, or movie nights. the actual process of learning to hang out is tough, but once you meet people, it really does just become a problem of finding something you're both interested in doing and asking if they'd like to do it

as for getting a girlfriend, that's unfortunately something you've gotta play by ear. I've never gotten into a relationship gracefully, and I don't think that's exceptionally uncommon

to get a girlfriend, you first have to have a friend. you can theoretically get around this, but I don't recommend it. you then have to perform the absolutely horrifying ordeal of admitting you've got a crush

the ordeal of admitting a crush gets a little bit easier the more sure you are the other person is amenable to it, and sometimes the other person will do it for you, but someone's gotta do it

it's a leap of faith onto concrete a solid 50% of the time, but if you make sure to approach people in good faith, it's usually pretty low-stakes (besides being embarrassing, unfortunately). it all comes back to open communication at the end of the day

it'll work out

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temporalhiccup · 1 year

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Tips on finding folks who'll give generous thoughtful feedback, and on ensuring a diversity of playtesters (not only across marginalisations, but experience levels etc).

Feedback and a robust set of playtesters are so important to my game design process. Playtesting is an absolute joy for me, while being an incredible way to grow as a designer.

So! Tips on finding your playtesters! Warning, I apparently went into full geek mode in this post, so proceed at your own risk.

Clarify what's essential for your core playtest group.

This differs per designer so I'll give you what's essential for me and why. Reading through this, I invite you to consider what makes you go "ah, me too!", "hmmm, nah", "oooh kinda" and create your own list of what's essential from your responses. I recommend keeping it to three things!

Relatively high experience with ttrpgs. I learned long ago that I enjoy designing complex and interesting experiences for my players. There is an argument to be made that complex games with a strong structure are actually great for those new to the hobby. I've seen folks point out that the "rules lite" and "simple" ttrpgs only really make sense to seasoned players. That being said, my games do ask for a high level of engagement, for players to be intuitive and creative on the fly. Also, players who have more experience across different games provide the most useful feedback for my process. Otherwise, and I hate to say it, the feedback tends to feel like "Getting A Lot Of Boss Baby Vibes From This".

Places story and character before mechanics. This makes it easier for me to keep tweaking the mechanics and play structure to encourage placing story and character first. I take note of what cool things my players did during a playtest, and later I'll try to codify that into a mechanic that's open to interpretation. I have a harder time with play testers who look too closely at the mechanics and feel constricted by them! But this can go too far: I don't get great feedback from folks who are comfortable ignoring a game and its mechanics almost entirely, and just free play the entire time. If they can't engage with my game then I can't work on its design. So finding that balance is key! Folks who help focus on the story and character potential contained in or bursting forth from my mechanics is super helpful.

Understands the kind of game I want to make. This is the most important one. The cool thing about indie games is you can and SHOULD go hard in expressing your gaming philosophy, while highlighting themes from your lived experience. I am not interested in creating a generic system that can play "any" experience. In my mind, that just means I've catered to the mainstream expectation of what a TTRPG is, which is influenced and structured by the dominant creative voice: cis-het, white, and male. Playtesters who understand, or are at least open to, the kind of games I make are essential. My games often dive into queer and post-colonial themes: found family, emotional exploration, a focus on relationships, generational responsibility and pain, a personal definition of freedom, among others. This is not because I am consciously writing about these things: I am simply writing what I know. And what I know is being a queer Filipino. Does that mean I need playtesters who are only queer and Filipino? No, absolutely not. But playtesters who don't force a mainstream/heteronormative/cis/white perspective through feedback is essential.

Find a community that is made up of players who embody what's essential for you

Do you absolutely need to engage with a community? No, you can put together a group of friends and playtest with each other, sure! In fact that's what I do now. But most of these people I met through an online community!

My own experiences with putting together groups just wasn't as enriching compared to becoming part of a community. TTRPGs shine the most when they're played with people who can engage with each other meaningfully, and communities provide that energy in abundance.

Your best bet is to find this community online. And I mean community community. The general open social spaces like Twitter, hashtags "communities", Tumblr, un-modded Discord servers, these are not communities. They are social spaces made up of several folks who just happen to have the same hobby.

Instead seek out online spaces that are cared for, that have a group of active members who ensure safety and expression, who put marginalized voices first. I know these spaces are few. But every time I have drifted from them to seek out playtesters elsewhere, I have been disappointed 90% of the time. You may have more luck than I do tho!

You can find this group in person, but indie ttrpgs flourish online. It's just easier to find people, usually across different time zones and all around the globe, who are interested in playing indie games.

Prioritize players over designers

So, I say this as someone who enjoys playtesting and engaging with designers. Let me explain what I mean.

This is a very personal thing, but my design and tastes prioritize play over theory. My design philosophy grows and evolves through the act of play. I design from a place of intuition and instinct, and only see what I was doing in hindsight. It's a grounded and dirty creative process. The hindsight sharpens instinct, and the process starts all over again.

I tend to get better feedback from folks who will say things like "well, I only just play, I'm not a designer", or from other designers who prioritize play as much as I do.

In my experience, the feedback I get that comes from a purely theoretical place, just doesn't vibe with me or offer anything I can act on. I'll think we're talking about the same thing, and it turns out, we absolutely weren't! It made the feedback and conversation frustrating.

Games designed from "pure" theory tend to be unfun for me to play or engage with. (this opens a whole new conversation about the value of games that aren't designed played, and I do cherish their value, but that's outside of my playtesting advice!)

If your design process and enjoyment is different from mine, then heck yes friend, go find your people and make beautiful games together!

When something works, stick with it.

My playtesting process has grown and changed over the years, and I've settled on a very simple process that offers the best feedback for my design.

I have two core playtesters (shout out to Josh of @ostrichmonkey-games and Sherri Stewart), and a rotating huge group of players (who mostly came from one online community, but a whole bunch are folks I met online and support my games).

My core playtesters embody the essentials: Josh and Sherri have a lot of experience with ttrpgs (that differ from each other), they place story and character before mechanics, and they understand the kind of games I want to make (better than I do, I would dare say).

For each game I playtest, I'll pick 1-2 more players from the open group who bring something else I need. Sometimes it'll be "I need someone relatively new to ttrpgs" or "I need someone who loves the magical girl genre as much as I do" or "I need someone who doesn't know what the heck the magical girl genre is".

It can be as hyper specific as "I think my game would break and become unfun with someone who takes their time and maybe overthinks a little bit, who talks it out for a long time with players. I'm going to see if I can tweak the game to be more accommodating to this playstyle."

There you go! Playtesting is my favorite part of the game design process and I'm always happy to talk about it. I hope this is helpful!

#ttrpg design #indie ttrpg #ttrpg #playtesting #ask me #design breakdown

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kaesaaurelia · 8 months

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Made little Hero Forge guys out of every single character I've ever played at least one session of in a TTRPG. (The ones with closeups I've played for more than one session.) Details under the cut.

Top Row:

Literally Just Terezi Pyrope, Pathfinder; half-orc Investigator Made for a Pathfinder oneshot wherein my friend was playing a Vriska-inspired character. I feel the need to disclaim that we did not kill or maim anyone out-of-game. I don't even remember if we killed anyone in-game because I remember it being pretty puzzle/trap-focused?

????; Ryuutama; Crafter/Autumn Sorceress I'm kicking myself that I don't remember her name. She was a seamstress, and in the specific world we were playing in we were the descendants of space colonists, so I decided her ancestors would be from a culture with really pretty fabric patterns.

Ylva Truehand, D&D 5E; half-orc monk. A herbo if ever there was one. Accidentally became the figurehead of a coup d'etat at home and had to Leave Right Now Immediately. We only got to the part where we all met at an inn before outside circumstances meant the campaign fell apart.

2nd Row:

Katja, 3.5E D&D; human cleric prestige class (maybe a Radiant Servant of Pelor?) My very first TTRPG character! I played her in a high school friend's historical-fantasy-inspired homebrew setting campaign he ran one summer in college. She was meant to be an army doctor for Fantasy Imperial Russia and we were doing an escort mission across a desert that was, iirc, disputed territory between three superpowers? Mostly I remember killing a lot of ninjas and then stumbling across a magical oasis where the water was magically pacifying, finding the mineral that was responsible for this effect, grinding a bunch of it into powder, and then making our GM's life a living hell by slipping it into NPCs' drinks whenever we wanted something from them.

3rd Row:

Safira, Stewpot; Paladin/Artisan. This one's pretty obviously an expy of my angel OC Vehuel. Stewpot is a game about retiring from adventuring so the character concept for her was "Holy warrior chosen by prophecy to kill a great evil with a magic sword; accidentally fell in love with the great evil. Eventually killed it anyway. Deeply traumatized."

Yarrow Tunneler, Mausritter; Acorn sign wireworker. Yarrow came out so cute here! A lot of stuff in Mausritter is randomly assigned and I think her class was one of those things, but I liked the wireworker thing (basically she's a mouse electrician) and one of her starting bits of equipment was a spool of wire. There weren't any good wire spools on Hero Forge, but I managed to make a battery-looking thing for her to carry around on her back.

Esca Glowfin, Ocean Tides; mermaid. Yeah so the game wanted me to choose whether she was going to be a mermaid or pirate but I wanted to be both so I made it work. The actual character concept I had in my head does not look much like this but turns out one of Hero Forge's weaknesses is deep sea benthic horrors with needle teeth. So I just made her hot. Sorry, Esca, you probably deserved better.

4rd Row:

Minu Darzi, Shadowrun 5E/Definitely Not Shadowrun At All; elf face. This one's an expy of my demon OC Nisroc, but like, a very very tiny sliver of Nisroc's whole schtick. I tend to describe her as "what if Grendel's mother was a shitty grifter who wanted to be an influencer?" but she shoots a lot of people so I feel like her sphere of influence is powerful but limited to like. Influencing people to die.

5th Row:

Royse, 5E D&D; Aasimar rogue. Another Vehuel expy, this one much younger and less traumatized. Royse was made for a West Marches group I didn't really vibe with. The one session I played was great but the out-of-game downtime stuff felt like a part-time accounting job and I don't have any interest in accounting. Anyway Royse was fun and she was gonna be a Swashbuckler.

Pandora (& Scylax), Worlds Without Number; mage (Necromancer/Beastmaster). For the oneshot group I'm part of we've started doing a test combat session at the end of Session Zero to make sure our characters aren't going to die immediately, and after that our GM decided we should be using the Heroic rules. In the combat trial, Pandora used her one (1) spell slot to mind-control one of the wolves that were attacking us and it killed a bunch of the rest of them, so given the opportunity to add another 1/2 mage specialization I picked Beastmaster and gave her a wolf. I really liked some of the lore for this game but oof, it's super unforgiving. (I think it might be a good starting point if you wanted to play a Locked Tomb campaign, though?)

Zamira the Magnificent, Blades in the Dark; slide. This character was a disgraced stage magician who accidentally killed her assistant (maybe sawed them in half?) and I liked the concept but our Blades in the Dark party really didn't end up doing much RP, even though we are a very RP-heavy group; I kind of wish the game had facilitated it more.

6th Row:

????; Tempus Diducit; Weird Scientist. Tempus Diducit is a no-prep chaotic game about a time travel crisis where a lot of things are randomized; mostly I remember there being superintelligent octopi and making strong acids, and also me having a lot of very annoying ideas involving my specialized knowledge of both cephalopods and chemistry.

????; Subway Runners. I remember very little about my Subway Runners character but basically this is a no-prep game where your character sheet is entirely randomized and every character is probably at least a little Done With This Shit because every Subway Runners PC is a gig economy worker whose shitty gig job is fixing an urban fantasy public transit system full of extremely weird shit. I think by the end of the session all our characters had cat ears.

Miriam; You Awaken in a Strange Place; marine biologist. Once more my specialized cephalopod knowledge comes back to bite me in the ass! (Also, this is the second Miriam on the list; 'Zamira the Magnificent' was a stage name.) YAiaSP is another no-prep chaotic game; you also get to make up all the skills your characters have, and Miriam was good at Identifying Marine Animals but bad at Working Under Pressure, which was great because they were in a locked submarine murder mystery and identifying marine animals was basically of no use whatsoever. I think in the end she failed a Using Scientific Equipment roll and then bluffed that she had actually gotten the DNA results to get the murderer to confess. This is unethical if you're in law enforcement; if you're a professional marine animal identifier it's still unethical but I think it's also kind of impressive. Only I forget if it actually worked, so maybe it wasn't.

7th Row:

Heshky, Pathfinder 2E; half-orc investigator. I have literally only ever played half-orc investigators in Pathfinder, which is very funny to me. [Edit: This is no longer true! I have a dwarf ranger now.] Heshky here is not much like the Terezi expy, though. He is an expy, but of one of my OCs rather than someone else's and his backstory is that he's a former mob accountant whose boss died in circumstances that were technically not his fault, so he had to leave town for a while. I would absolutely love to play him somewhere else; he was made for my one-shot group but we ended up stretching that Pathfinder one-shot out to like 5? 6? sessions and I got very attached. (If I played him again I miiight not start him out as an investigator though, because he almost died like 3 times.)

8th Row:

Zirane, I'm Sorry, Did You Say Street Magic, baker. ISDYSSM is a cooperative worldbuilding game so I kind of forgot there was a character I played in it, but apparently I did! This guy lives in a fantasy city and works at a cafe owned by some mystery person (possibly a vampire?) but he's not worried about that. He is good at baking, but likes experimenting with weird combinations of flavors, which sometimes means his extremely well-made baked goods taste regrettable.

Kjersti, Session Zero; war-witch deserter. Session Zero is a character creation/development game without character classes; it can actually be played solo as a writing exercise too! So I just kind of went wild here. I really like the concept I ended up with and keep meaning to post what I wrote up for her; over the course of the game she went from annoyed arcane college student to spoiled rich girl to army deserter trying to survive a magical war crimes-induced apocalypse and daydreaming about overthrowing her own government in no time at all.

Edie, Genesys; dwarf mad alchemist. The setting we decided on for the Genesys one-shot was cyberpunk fantasy, a bit like Shadowrun but if magic had always been in the world, so I decided to pull out one of my old, old LJRP characters (Ed Espis) and repurpose her. Edie grew up a third- or fourth-generation corporate citizen and very privileged, but when her parents died under mysterious circumstances and she was fired shortly thereafter, the company decided she had to pay off all the resources they had invested in her entire family so now she's broke and has to do crimes (petty) instead of crimes (war) to live. She ended this session by shooting a guy in the head but listen, he extremely deserved it.

#kaesa op #kaesa ocs #long post

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lunarlagomorph · 2 years

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would you be able to list some ttrpg systems that are best for specific things? or just some that you would recommend with a short little reason or something?

I'm like abt to go backnto bed lol so i dont wanna think out a huge list but here's 3 off the top of my head and ill add more later possibly

1. FATE is my go to reccomendation. It is essentially the open source software of ttrpgs. As long as you have a setting you can pretty much just drop fate into it and have a fun time. And it blends combat well with the rest of the game as opposed to having an entirely separate set of combat mechanics. And it allows for character creation that is flexible to any kind kf concelpt willbwork.

It has a few issues but its so extremely moddable that you can fix those if they bother you. I was even writing my own magic system for it back when i still had ppl to play ttrpgs with lol. But even without modding it's a ton of fun. Oh and also other ppl have written mods for kt you can use.

2. Blades in the Dark is a personal favorite of mine. I often find PBTA-based systems to be lazy but that is not the case here (if u dont know powered by the apocalypse dw about it).

The premise is you play a group of some variety of outlaw (smuggler? Assassin, cultist, etc.) uh idk what id call the setting. Like bloodborne but with ghosts instead of blood. Close to Sunless Sea, if you know that. And the gameplay loop consists of 'planning' heists or other jobs (but ill use heists going forward) going on them, and then working to expand your groups influence and goals in downtime.

I say plan in quotes because you do not in fact plan heists, mostly, though you can prepare for them. Instead bitd has a system i love where you can spend a resource to have 'flashbacks' to your preparation to the heist. So, instead of saying ohh ill bring this and that and this and that and do this beforehand you can be like. Okay flashback we agreed beforehand to have a signal for when ppl were coming. Or flashback i brought my wire cjtters along. It allows flr a heist to work without having to actually successfully plan a heist ahead of time wjich is uh. Basically not really possible to do in ttrpgs and still have an interesting heist. And if the system sound unbalanced trust me there are factors to mitigate abusing it.

Beyond that i do also just find the skill and rolling system fantastic. If you have zero idea what to do but fate sounds dauting to run i think this is rhe way to go

3. Finally this isnt the same vein as dnd but as someone who loves storytelling rpgs i strongly reccomend The Quiet Year. It's a small rpg (one 4 hour session). You take turns essentially simulating and progresding the story of along a small civilization which has been hit hard and is on the brink of collapse. It is very open as well to the point where you end up having created an entirely new setting when you're done with it. There's also games like Microscope but i havent ever actually gotten to play those with ppl lol.

Beyond those if you want a good place to find things Drivethrurpg.com is my go to source. Spend some time clicking around on there and u might find something. Bcuz tbh the real lesson i want to impart when i say dont play dnd isnt 'play this instead'. It's 'there are so many ttrpgs out there, don't just play only one' it's kind of like only playing one video game or board game. Sure you like it but theres so many to try.

Hope this helps! Like i said ill probably add more later.

#my answer

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romijuli · 2 years

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All the things you reblog about dnd make it seem so cool and fun! But,, I don't have anyone I could play with and have no idea where to start

Have any tips on how to start? And if there's a way to play without meeting up in person?

Hi anon!!! Honestly, finding people to play with is possibly the hardest part of dnd, hehe. That and getting schedules to line up. (I got really lucky with my current campaigns; my bf is always ready for dnd, and some idle discussion about dnd on a discord server led to my other campaign!)

So, uh, I guess these are Chel’s (not-so) Hot Tips For Dnd! Or any ttrpg really cause like. There are SO MANY out there that deserve some love :3 (apologies for potential lack of coherence it is like 11pm where I’m at so I’m SLEEPY)

Okay so for starters we’re answering out of order but: I’ve actually been in only one campaign that met up in person! Most of my dnd experience has been virtual, whether over discord voice chat (several old campaigns) or zoom (my paladin’s campaign) or just a regular old text channel (my bard’s campaign). There are plenty of options for it if you can’t meet in person or just would prefer not to; actually, doing it virtually makes things a LOT easier in terms of getting a party together. Hell, you could even trash the whole “schedules lining up” part of it and just make it a play-by-post situation a la regular old RP. I’ve had a few campaigns that did that! (Rip telecodnd which I think is TECHNICALLY just on a really long hiatus but)

Dnd is becoming semi-cool nowadays—thank you actual play podcasts!—so odds are that any nerd-adjacent community you’re involved with has at least one person with dnd experience and a couple others who would be interested. Other than that, I believe there are discord servers and the like dedicated to helping people find folks interested in a campaign, but I don’t personally have experience with those so I can’t really speak to that.

Hardest or second-hardest aspect of getting a campaign together: figuring out who’s running it, honestly. DMing is hard; I have a little bit of experience with it in dnd and there are so many things to keep track of, but if someone in your potential group has some Cool Story Ideas in mind and the patience to herd three to six players, it might be for them! And if you’re lacking in Cool Story Ideas, god knows there are plenty of adventure modules online that you can run.

Speaking of which, you can find pretty much everything you need online without having to buy a single book. PIRATING IS YOUR FRIEND, REALLY. Wizards of the Coast is owned by hasbro they earn enough.

Talk about expectations and things before you start playing!!!! Stuff like topics you don’t want addressed, preferred roleplay-versus-just-monster-hunting, etc etc. it’ll save you a LOT of problems in the long run.

If you wanna get a feel for how dnd works ahead of time, there are plenty of podcasts available featuring people playing it! Critical Role is pretty well known and has plenty of material to work with, The Adventure Zone is generally sillier but shows off how Fucking Weird you can get with it (note; this is specifically about the Balance arc, I haven’t listened to the rest yet and I know that the second season actually isn’t dnd at all!), and Dimension 20 uses dnd to get REALLY neat with settings and concepts. And there are plenty more out there that I’m not familiar with!

Honestly just mucking around with character concepts ahead of time. Get weird with it!

Anyone who says you’re ‘playing wrong’ is a jerk.

#chel talks dnd #also you can look into other ttrpgs and see if any of them pique your interest :3 I have a few that I like at least in theory #I don’t get to play a lot of non-dnd oop

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moriganstrongheart · 2 years

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TTRPG #1: Bending My Own Rules

One of my favourite things about working on my own tabletop system has been establishing rules for the game, and then finding ways to break them. Maybe it's my detail-oriented mindset—my need to test and prepare for every possibility—but I get satisfaction from saying "This works...but what if it didn't?"

In most cases, this manifests as abilities that allow players to circumvent negative game mechanics. In a few rare cases, though, I like to go further—more than I probably should. I'd like to get into some examples, but since this is my first post on IF:RPG, I should explain basic game mechanics first.

The way encounters work in IF:RPG isn't really different from most TTRPGs:

The GM sets up a scene.

The player tells the GM what they want to do.

The GM determines if a roll is necessary.

The player (with help from the GM) determines if their character has anything that can modify the roll.

The player rolls their dice pool to perform their intended action.

The roll's outcomes are resolved and the consequences play out.

Possible ways to resolve the roll include:

Failure

Mixed Success

Success (Full Success or Regular Success)

Critical Success

Free Intuition

I won't get into the details right now; it's a lot to explain, and it's not necessary for what I want to discuss in this post.

What I want to focus on is that in IF:RPG the main RNG is achieved through dice rolls. While it's fun to empower players by allowing them to side-step the RNG, completely removing it would also remove the Game from Role Playing Game, effectively transforming a play session into an improv session. Don't get me wrong—I believe improv is a necessary component to the TTRPG experience, and it's fun in its own right. But without a game mechanic to simulate chance, it's left up to the players to introduce impactful complications and hardships at inappropriate times.

It's not that players are necessarily incapable of weaving interesting narratives; it's more that leaving the looming threat of failure to an impartial entity like dice rolls adds an element of tension and surprise, while removing the responsibility and blame of making situations more difficult from the participants. Of course, one could make a case that the GM decides the intensity of consequences, but the decision to implement failure is still left to chance. In any case, rolling math rocks is exciting, and leads to interesting situations.

So when thinking about how I can break the rules, completely removing dice rolls is something I try to avoid as much as possible. When I do, I make sure there's some other cost for the players to pay.

And yet, I still have the urge to break the system, which leads to the Risk Analysis specialisation.

As an aside, during character creation, players select a Species, a Class, a Quirk and Specialisation. A character's specialisation makes them unique, whether within the group or from others that share their class.

And Risk Analysis is probably the most unique specialisation I've added to the game so far.

It is an attempt at gamifying the unnecessary bureaucracy surrounding financial services, specifically when it comes to risk assessment. If you're unaware, there are entire industries that run on taking people's money, then deciding whether those same people deserver financial security (it sucks). Specifically, the inspiration for Risk Analysis came from movies like Stranger Than Fiction and Along Came Polly, the first of which is actually decent, though both movies suffer from the manic pixie dream girl trope.

I just thought it would be funny to have a character who is so focused on analysing risk that they completely side-step random chance.

In other words, no math rocks.

Here is an excerpt from the first draft of the rulebook regarding the Risk Analysis specialisation:

You do not roll dice when performing actions; instead, you have to calculate the risk involved in performing an action before taking said action. The closer your risk calculations are to the GM's calculations determines whether you succeed or not.

Risk is assessed based on the class and species of the player character, the potential incoming damage, the threat level of the encounter, and the character's ability to tackle the intended action. Success is measured differently from the standard ruleset, but the consequences remain the same (except for the ability to gain Intuition, which isn't possible via risk calculation).

What this means is that every time the player wants to perform an action, they must guess how much damage their player character will receive if they fail, as well as the level of the encounter. They must then calculate a risk score based on all available information.

This requires as much extra work as it appears. But the point here isn't to empower the player, but instead to provide a different, potentially interesting way of approaching gameplay.

I provide the following example in the rulebook:

The GM calculates that the player character jumping over a pit of spikes has a risk score of seven (7) based on the following factors: • Base Risk – +4 (Terran Adventurer) • Worst Case Outcome – +5 (Spike Pit) • Threat Level – +1 (Same Level) • Modifiers – -3 (Skill + Feat) If the player guesses a score of seven (7), they would get a critical success. If they guess a score of ten (10) points, they would get a mixed success instead.

I don't expect this specialisation to see much use in play. It's a lot of work—for the player and the GM—and can be tedious. But for someone who wants to really embody an overly meticulous character, I can see them having a good time with it. It can also appeal to people who don't like chance, or maybe to people who are themselves particularly meticulous. Including Risk Analysis in the game is at the same time a joke, and a way for me to bend my own rules.

Apart from Risk Analysis, I also included a few other complex specialisations and quirks:

Adaptable – Player must select a new specialisation every time their character levels up.

Infected – Character is inflicted with an incurable illness that drains them physically, but can lead to great power at higher levels.

Roleplayer – Player has two character sheets; one for their player character, and another that represents a character their player character LARPs.

Obedience – Character is unable to perform actions without explicit orders from other characters.

Robot Avatar – Character controls a robotic android from a remote location, with the majority of their interaction with the world occurring through the android.

To be clear, the vast majority of quirks and specialisations offer simple character empowerment, and it's left up to the player to make things interesting once play starts. The quirks and specialisations listed above do much more of the heavy lifting, while also giving opportunities for interesting complications and developments.

The feedback from my players on these out-of-the-box quirks and specialisations has been pretty lukewarm so far. In retrospect, I can see why new players wouldn't want to bend the rules while they're still getting used to the standard ruleset. My hope is that players will be more inclined to explore weird, rule-bending options for their characters once they've gotten used to the game.

#ifttrpg #immortal freedom #immortal freedom role playing game #rpg #worldbuilding #discussion #my discussions #ttrpg #homebrew #writing

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