#Indie TTRPG

[efangamez]

Okay who wants to refill what I just paid for bail funds and a takeout dinner today because of my horrible day yesterday??????

You can snag GRIM and MOURN for $15 bucks if ya purchase them in a bundle 😬😬

Snag it, so we can fill the $50 I've spent today lmao (this economy blows, but also FREE PALESTINE!!! 🍉🇵🇸🍉🇵🇸)

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #trans #queer #indie #gamedev #game dev #cyberpunk #scifi #dnd

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played THURSDAY ?

By Eli Seitz

Thursday is a role playing game for 2-4 players of time loops, drama, and learning from your mistakes inspired by Russian Doll.

It is a game about finding out what is important in life as you fall off the fire escape for the fifth time. It's about finally making that deep connection, but knowing it'll all be lost with the next reset. Discover your character's hidden backstory and unmet desires, and help them reach the personal epiphany they need to escape the fatal time loop and move on.

#ttrpg #tabletop rpg #poll #poll time #usa #2020s #indie ttrpg #thursday

[junkfoodgames]

Necromancer Heretic is out now!

This is a solo card and journaling game. You are a sorcerer who wishes to bring your lover back from the dead. Complete the resurrection ritual and escape before you are killed by the king’s guard! Using just a deck of cards and blackjack mechanics, you’ll need some skill and bit of luck to survive!

Check it out on itch now! Please share!

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #ttrpg community #solo game #solo ttrpg #journaling ttrpg #journaling game #card games #ttrpg zine #game zine

[goblinmixtape]

A quick teaser video for my new TTRPG!

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #solo ttrpg #death of the author #my ttrpg #tarot ttrpg

[ratwavegamehouse]

This is Your Lifepath is back for season 2! On the first episode I interview @gormengeist (GREED, Bubblegum Wizards,Nuclear Knights) and we talk about language, noir, finding the voice a project needs and more.

As well as Spotify available wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you catch every episode. This season is releasing weekly and is going to run until the end of July.

(Also fun fact; even though we made a whole book together this was the first time me and Gormengeist talked live i.e. not over email/discord)

#indie ttrpg #game design #podcast #interview podcast #i'd like to say that bringing back my decently listened to and well liked podcast right as I'm gearing up for a kickstarter was planned #but i just am always doing like seven things and so sometimes they land like this #Spotify

[soulmuppet]

3 DAYS LEFT TO BACK THE GARDENS OF YNN: REMASTERED!!

#ttrpg #ttrpg community #indie ttrpg #tabletop #ttrpgs #rpg #osr

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, and Themes of Disability, Mental Illness, and Criminality.

Back Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy on kickstarter before May 10th if you want to help a disabled person with limited ability to work pay his bills.

Verisimilitude, What Would a Person Do?

To understand Eureka’s themes regarding disability, mental illness, and criminality, you first have to understand its verisimilitude.

“Verisimilitude” is defined as “the appearance of being true or real,” and it is a big part of the core design ethos behind Eureka. It is a very realistic game.

We aren’t necessarily of the opinion that “realism” is a better design choice than stylization overall for RPGs, but it is a better design choice for Eureka, because we want the PCs to be very normal, believable people who make believable, organic decisions in extraordinary situations. No matter what anyone says, the mechanics of a TTRPG strongly influence what kind of stories are told with it, and what characters do in those stories. So if we want characters to make realistic decisions, the world they inhabit and interact with must be constructed of realistic rules.

Even though there is a small chance that they may be a supernatural creature, PCs in Eureka are still not fearless action heroes, chosen ones, or anything of the sort. They’re normal people with jobs, friends, and families who get mixed up in mysterious and/or dangerous situations, often against their will. They are fragile, vulnerable, imperfect, and they, largely, know it.

“Composure” is a mechanic that helps you know it too. I’ve given a deeper explanation of the Composure mechanic in the post linked here, but I’ll give a very very very condensed version in this post. Composure can sort of be thought of as “emotional/fatigue HP,” (and no, it is NOT “sanity”) it acts as a guideline for how well your character is handling the situation, and when it gets low enough, it starts to have serious mechanical effects as well, because a character’s stat modifier can never be higher than their current Composure level. Fear, hunger, and fatigue all lower Composure, and eating, sleeping, and bonding with one’s fellow investigators can all restore it, at least for normal people. More on that further down. All you really need to know for now is that when Composure gets below zero it starts eating into HP, so characters can even pass out or die from loss of Composure, and also one single bullet is enough to permanently cripple a character, and the rate of Composure loss during combat reflects how serious that is for the characters.

Grievous Wounds

It isn’t too uncommon for RPGs to have some sort of “flaw” system, whereby in character creation you can give your PC “flaws” or some kind of penalty, and usually get that balanced out by being able to add extra bonuses elsewhere, and these “flaws” may take the form of disabilities.

Critical Role’s Candela Obscura, the whole document of which is one of the most egregious examples of liberalism and toxic positivity I’ve ever seen in the TTRPG space, takes this beyond just character creation, and makes it so that if a PC receives a “scar” in combat that reduces their physical stats, their mental stats automatically go up by an equivalent amount, and proudly asserts that to make any mechanic which functions otherwise is ableist. I think you can probably tell what I think of that from this sentence alone and I don’t need to elaborate. Getting bogged down in all the failures, mechanical and moral, of Candela Obscura would make this post three times as long.

I actually do think that as long as you aren’t moralizing and patting yourself on the back this hard about it, “flaw” systems in character creation are a pretty good idea in most cases, it allows for more varied options during character creation, while preserving game balance between the PCs.

But in real life, people aren’t balanced. The events that left me injured and disabled didn’t make me smarter or better at anything—if anything, they probably made me stupider, considering the severity of the concussion! Some things happened to me, and now I’m worse. There’s no upside, I just have to keep going by trying harder with a less efficient body, and rely more on others in situations where I am no longer capable of perfect self-sufficiency.

Denying that a disabled person is, by definition, less capable of doing important tasks than the average person is to deny that they need help, and to deny that they need help is to enable a refusal to help.

This is the perspective from which Eureka’s Grievous Wounds mechanic was written.

When a character is reduced to 1 HP, which by design can result from a single hit from most weapons, they may become incapacitated, or they may take a Grievous Wound, which is a permanent injury with no stat benefits. Think twice before getting into a shootout.

Grievous Wounds don’t have to result from combat, they can also be given to a character during character creation, but not as a trade-off for an extra bonus.

“But then doesn’t my character just have worse stats than the rest of the party?” Yes, didn’t you read the above section? There is no benefit, except for the opportunity to play a disabled character in an TTRPG, and this character will probably have to be more reliant on the rest of the party to get by in various situations. Is that a bad thing?

Monsters

Just like mundane people in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, monsters are playable, because they are regular people. I’ve gone over this in other posts and also you can just read about it in Chapter 8 of the Eureka rulebook, but the setting of Eureka doesn’t have a conspiracy or “masquerade” hiding or separating supernatural people from normal society. They exist within normal society, and a lot of them eat people.

Most RPGs consider monsters to just be evil, they do evil for evil’s sake. RPGs that seek to subvert this expectation often instead make monsters misunderstood and wrongfully persecuted, but harmless. Eureka takes a wholly different approach.

There are five playable types of monsters in the rulebook right now, and it’ll be seven if we hit all the stretch goals, but for simplicity’s sake this post will just focus on the vampire. Despite them applying in different ways, the same overall themes apply to nearly every monster, so if you get the themes for the vampire, you’ll get the gist of what Eureka is doing with monsters in general.

I mentioned Composure above, and how it can normally be restored by eating food and sleeping. Well, vampires can not restore their Composure this way. They don’t sleep, and normal people food might be tasty as long as it isn’t too heavily seasoned for them, but it doesn’t do anything for them nutritionally. Their main way to restore Composure is fresh living human blood, straight from the source. To do what mundane PCs do normally by just eating and sleeping, vampires have to take from another, whether they’re happy with this arrangement or not. They do not, of course, literally have to, and a player is not forced to make their vampire PC drink blood, just like you don’t literally have to eat food, but they do and you do if you want to live in any degree of comfort or happiness, or else they’d eventually just sit at 0 Composure and not be able to effectively do anything.

There’s a reason that this is a numerical mechanic and not simply a rule that says something like “this character is a vampire and therefore they must drink blood once every session,” and that is to emphasize and demonstrate that the circumstances a person faces drive their behavior. In America, there is a tendency to think of criminality and harmfulness as resulting from something of an intrinsic evil, but in my experience and observation, people do not just wake up at like age 16 and decide “I think I’ll go down the criminal life path.” Through their life circumstances they have been barred from the opportunities that would have given them other options. People need food, food costs money, money requires work, work requires getting hired, but getting hired requires a nearby job opening, an education, an impressive resume, nice clean clothes, a charismatic attitude, consistent transportation, and so on. For people without, criminality is something they are funneled into, which becomes harder to avoid the longer they go without consistent access to their basic needs. The choice will be between taking money from others by force or trickery, or running completely out of money.

As the Composure counter ticks down, a vampire, or other playable monster, is going to encounter much the same dilemma. There is little to no “legal” or “harmless” way for them to get their needs met, even if they do have some money. Society just isn’t set up for that. And no your kink is not the solution to this, trying to suggest every vampire get into sex work is like one step removed from telling every girl she should just get an OnlyFans the minute she turns 18, or that women should just marry a man and be a housewife that gets taken care of if they want their needs met.

Playable monsters in Eureka are dangerous, harmful people. They were set up to be.

“Oh well then the vampire should just eat bad people!” You mean those same bad people i just described above? See this post for answers to all the other arguments people are going to make to try and absolve vampires of causing harm.

Society not being set up for that brings me to next reading/theme: Monstrousness as disability, and monsters as takers.

Mundane human characters restore 2 points of Composure per day just by eating food and sleeping, but vampires do not, they can’t. To restore their Composure they have to take from others a valuable resource that everyone needs to live and the extraction of which is excruciatingly painful and debilitating (blood). No one knows what happens to blood after a vampire drinks it, it’s just gone. Vampires are open wounds through which blood pours out of the universe.

This is a special need, something they have to take but cannot give back. Their special needs make them literally a drain on society and the world.

Even in so-called “progressive” spaces, there is a tendency to consider takers, people who take much more than they give back, such as disabled people, as something that needs to be pruned, with the mask over this being the aforementioned total denial of the fact that disabled people take more than they can give.

In this way, vampires and other playable monsters are, inarguably, “takers,” but in positioning them as protagonists right beside mundane protagonists, Eureka puts you in their shoes, and forces you to at least reckon with the circumstances that make them this way, as well as acknowledge their inner lives. You have to acknowledge two things: That they are dangerous, harmful people who take more than they can give, and that they are people. Because they are people, Eureka asserts that they have inherent value, a right to exist, and a right to do what they need to do to exist.

One final point is that of monstrousness as mental illness. Mental illness is a disability, one pretty comparable to physical disability in a lot of ways, so all of the above about disability can apply to this metaphor as well, but there are a few unique comparisons to make here.

It’s not the most efficient, but there are a couple of loopholes deliberately left in the rules that allow vampires to restore Composure without drinking blood. Eureka! moments can restore Composure, and Comfort checks from fellow investigators can restore Composure.

When I was writing the rules for how monsters regain Composure in accordance to these themes, I came to a dilemma where I wasn’t sure if it was thematically appropriate for them to be able to regain Composure in these ways, but ultimately I decided that yes, they can. It works with themes of mental illness, which is mental disability.

People with mental illnesses may have the potential to be harmful and dangerous, but study after study, including my own observation, has shown that mentally ill people with robust support structures and agency allowed to them to handle tasks are much less likely to enact harm, be that physical violence, relational violence, or violence against the self. So that’s why I kept that rule in for playable monsters. Being able to accomplish goals, and having friends who are there for them, makes the harmful person less likely to cause unnecessary harm.

I couldn’t really figure out where to fit this paragraph in so I’m sticking it here right before the conclusion: Vampires are especially great for this because they’re immortal, and because they always come back when “killed.” They can’t be exterminated, they aren’t going away, there will always be problem people in society, no matter how utopian or “progressive.” They’re a never-ending curse, who will always be a problem. The question is how you will handle them, not how you will get rid of them.

In conclusion,

Eureka is as much a study of the characters themselves as it is the mystery being solved by the characters. It is a harsh, but compassionate game, that argues through its own gameplay that yes, people do have needs which drive their behavior, many people do have special needs that are beyond their ability to reciprocate, and failure to meet the needs of even a small number of people in a society has high potential to harm the entire society, not just those individuals whose needs are unmet.

And Candela Obscura sucks.

Back Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy on kickstarter before May 10th if you want to help a disabled person with limited ability to work pay his bills.

If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!

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

You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!

Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

#disability #disability rights #disabled #leftism #critical role #candela obscura #eureka #eureka: investigative urban fantasy #ttrpg #rpg #roleplaying #tabletop #monsters #accesibility #blindness #autism spectrum disorder #autism awareness #autism acceptance #neurodivergent #adhd #ttrpgs #ttrpg community #ttrpg tumblr #indie ttrpg #dnd 5e #d&d 5e #vampirism #vampire #progressivism #lgbt art

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hello! I'm looking for an RPG that's set underground with a focus on mining and modern vehicles/technology, in the vein of Lego Rock Raiders and Power Miners. If nothing comes to mind, any systems you know that you think might be easily adapted to an underground mining setting works too!

THEME: Mining, Technology, Underground.

Hello there! I've got a few solo and a few multiplayer options for you, some about mining, some about tech, and some that might have to be tweaked but I think could still fit the bill!

Stoneburner, by Fari RPGs.

In his will, Brokur has bequeathed to you the cursed mines of the Long Belt, its dilapidated settlement, and the leadership of House Grandrock.

However, other dwarf houses seek to overthrow you and take control of the valuable minerals hidden deep within those cold tunnels.

To complicate matters further, most of the mines’ galleries are haunted by fire spitting demons from the underworld.

Cleanse. Rebuild. Survive.

Stoneburner is a sci-fantasy solo-friendly demon-hunting community-building tabletop role-playing game.  Inspired by the new school revolution movement, players take on the role of a group of dwarves who must assume control of a demon haunted mine, along with its accompanying settlement. A settlement which they inherited after the death of their distant relative. The game focuses on the dwarves' journey as they navigate the challenges of their new responsibilities, rebuild a new thriving community, and clear the mine of its fire spitting monsters.

Technically the mines of Stoneburner are in space, rather than underground, but I think there’s going to be some similarities nevertheless. The game is a combination of combat, survival and base-building, using the items that you find to create things that will help you hold your own. There’s machine upgrades, expeditions across a map, and problems that will show up every time you take a break. I think it’s definitely worth checking out!

Robo Goons, by Unknown Dungeon.

It is the distant future, humanity has disappeared from the surface of the Earth, and nature has taken back the planet. All that remains are overgrown man-made structures returned to the wild, vicious beasts that stalk the surface, and sentient robots who pick through the ruins of civilization for salvage. You are one such robot.

Robo-Goons is a lightweight, tabletop adventure game where the players take control of randomly generated robots and explore the ruins of humanity in search of upgrades and salvage. The core rules fit on a single page and all that's required is a pencil and paper, two six-sided dice, and some friends to play with.

Robo Goons uses the setting of a ruined civilization, with an added detail that your robots have solar batteries that need to be re-charged. If your robots are continuously salvaging from underground, or even just beneath heaps of scrap, then you have a natural cycle of going down and up again, giving you breaks as you play. The game also comes with a map, which represents the ruins that your robots will explore, with plenty of roll-tables to determine what kinds of places they’re exploring, and what threats might show up.

Astro Miners, by 7 Card Stud.

Astro Miners is a TTRPG about mining in space.

You are an robotic mining worker with a human brain. The only problem is your brain was wiped of all memory. You don't remember your name, your old life, even your sexuality and gender are all lost. You are a robot.

If you can mine enough material you'll earn enough credits to regain your memory and buy your freedom from the company if you want. 

Astro Miners is built for 3 players, but if you don’t mind doubling up on character classes, you can probably play with 4 or 5. Since the game is built on LUMEN, I’d expect your characters to be hyper-competent, with plenty of room for upgrading and customization. There are dropships that you can call in order to be able to sell things you’ve found and buy things you need, and you can also buy robots to help you carry things, fight things, illuminate dark areas and more!

Numenera: Destiny, by Monte Cook Games.

This is the Ninth World. The people of the prior worlds are gone—scattered, disappeared, or transcended. But their works remain, in the places and devices that still contain some germ of their original function. The ignorant call these magic, but the wise know that these are our legacy. They are our future. They are the Numenera.

Set a billion years in our future, Numenera is a tabletop roleplaying game about exploration and discovery. The people of the Ninth World suffer through a dark age, an era of isolation and struggle in the shadow of the ancient wonders crafted by civilizations millennia gone. But discovery awaits those brave enough to seek out the works of the prior worlds. Those who can uncover and master the numenera can unlock the powers and abilities of the ancients, and perhaps bring new light to a struggling world.

Discovery (the base game) is mostly about exploration, but Destiny, the biggest and most useful supplement, gives you character options for building and crafting, as well as plenty of interesting machines and vehicles for you to build and use. Numenera isn’t explicitly underground, nor is it about mining, but I think there are plenty of places within the world that you could start building an underground base in, or at least something similar.

DELVE and UMBRA, by Blackwell Writer.

DELVE: A Solo Map Drawing Game is a map drawing game that puts you in control of a dwarven hold as you discover the horrors that lurk below. This 44 page zine has everything you need to generate natural formations, forgotten ruins, enemies, wyrd magics, and ancient monstrosities. It has a simple turn-based combat system, rules for building your hold and optional challenges for a harder experience.

UMBRA: A Solo Game of Final Frontiers is a map drawing game that puts you in control of a sci-fi colony as you struggle against starvation, the void, and the many threats that will assail you from above and below. This 48 page zine has everything you need to generate natural formations, alien ruins, enemies, technologies, and forgotten terrors. It has a simple turn-based combat system, rules for building your colony and optional challenges for a harder experience.

DELVE firmly places itself in fantasy, but it is first and foremost a game about delving underground. In contrast, UMBRA is about mining in space, while fighting of alien threats. You draw cards from a deck of playing cards to find resources and discover landmarks, while combat takes the form of a tower-defense format. There are a lot of supplements available for DELVE, as well as a Cyberspace and a Stations expansion for UMBRA.

Other Games You Can Check Out

Underground, by emmy.

Dark Delve, by Fedmar.

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #game recommendations #dnd #asks #indie ttrpg #underground #mining

[draculaugust]

designing a dnd/ttrpg character by democracy

#dnd character #dnd #tumblr polls #help #character design #skitarii type shit #poll #please share!!! #poll time #polls #dnd oc #ttrpg character #indie ttrpg #auggie’s character polls

[tales-from-the-aether-ttrpg]

Heyooo I’m looking for some people who would be willing to help me play test my ttrpg tales from the aether!

Tales from the Aether is a rules heavy sword and sorcery ttrpg heavily inspired by a number of open world video games. It focuses on role play and story telling while integrating both into the combat and social mechanics. Its roughly on par with pathfinder for crunchiness but takes a completely different approach to resource management in combat.

We’ll be creating characters and playing in a tournament esk arena to test out both the character creation and player combat system and to help me figure out the monster balancing.

Your commitments will be pretty low with reading the rules/character creation being the biggest time commitment and after that its all combat baby! I estimate - based on my own health and availability - that well be playing once every two ish weeks when everyone is available.

If this would interest you, please leave a comment or send me a message! If ur not interested for what ever reason then pls reblog and share so this post has more reach <3

(Edit: the server is temporarily closed due to so many volunteers XD if you are interested in joining, stick around for when I open the server again)

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #tales from the aether #tfta

[arsene-inc]

Hey ttrpg Tumblr ,

Is there any game out there with dice but no dice rolling ?

#ttrpg #ttrpgs #ttrpg tumblr #indie ttrpg

[commander-ben]

The Kickstarter for Black Powder and Brimstone is now live!

Created by me and pubished by Free League this is an action packed TTRPG packed with Witchcraft and Gunpowder.

You can back the campagn here!

#illustration #horror #ttrpg #osr #mork borg #indie ttrpg #character design #rpg #ttrpg community #ttrpg art #ttrpg character #tabletop #roleplaying games

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played GRAVEMIRE ?

By Sylvan Lawrence

Gravemire is a tabletop roleplaying game about death, growth, horror, and survival, based in an original mechanical framework and set in the churning waters of the Louisiana bayou circa 1894. Players slip into the roles of outsiders arriving in the town of Scarstone, a rural outpost that has been warped by a terrible transformation known as the Convulsion. Once, Scarstone was surrounded by similar towns.

The Bayou once had an end. Now, unknowable numbers of horrors seep through the uncharted backwaters, strange magic contorts reality to its whims, and the settlements that called Scarstone their neighbor jut half-ruined from the mire like bones from a wound. Times have changed.

#ttrpg #tabletop rpg #poll #poll time #usa #2020s #indie ttrpg #Gravemire

[detyan]

Art from the amazing @mixmioart for a new Troika module; The Waifs and Strays of Longshot City!

Six new troublemakers for Superhero TTRPG campaigns! In order of appearance here;

PACKRAT - Junk collecting mutant rat, with a trash-can cannon.

DR. IRT - A worm-loving mad scientist; teeth slick with worm-juice.

DAYCARE - An infant hivemind, trying to get back to its family.

THE MILKMAN - The unaging god of milk awoken in a mortal shell.

KAT - Master thief, unseen by all.

BANQUO - Spectral prankster half-mad in undeath.

Designed for the excellent Troika spin-off Longshot City. Grab it for $1 here; the plain-text is free! Thanks everyone!

(Psst... There's also a chart of d36 Lesser Powers included for all your underpowered superhero needs!)

#indie ttrpg #ttrpg #dnd #ttrpg community #troika #superhero #tabletop roleplaying #ttrpg dev #ttrpg art #black and white #dungeon master #tabletop games #comic art #comics

[austinramsaygames]

Inspired by recent discussions of an Actual Play.

EDIT March 22: I can't believe I have to do this. *sigh*

I have played LOTS of games other than D&D. I GMed a podcast for 6 years that was literally about playing obscure games.

TTRPGs that don't use dice (or any randomizer) are still TTRPGs and great fun.

The "win condition" of a TTRPG is having fun with your friends (this can include stories that end with everyone crying).

I believe that there are three parties that have input on the story: the players, the GM, and the dice. Obviously this changes if you're playing a game that gets rid of 1 or 2 of those elements. This includes games that aren't D&D.

If a certain dice result would be uninteresting enough that you'd want to discard it entirely, you must ask why you would roll in the first place. This is the same for whether that would be success OR failure.

Finally, check out my Itch store.

EDIT April 3: I'm muting this now. Too many notifications explaining the stuff I put in the first edit to me like I'm an idiot. God, Tumblr really can't handle a joke.

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #actual play #actual play podcast #shitpost

[eliotbaum]

The Performer 🎭🎶 A character class for The Hidden Isle.

You can preorder the TTRPG here

#illustration #artists on tumblr #art #character art #character design #ttrpg #indie ttrpg #the hidden isle #bard