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haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted · 2 months

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Assassins of Dol Amroth Cover Art by Angus McBride

#Lord of the Rings #LotR #Middle Earth Roleplaying Game #Assassins of Dol Amroth #Covers #Cover Art #Fantasy #Art #Angus McBride

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callumogden · 1 year

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

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

Fantasy Maps in a Tolkien Style

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

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

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wanderingwoodlandslotro · 9 months

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✶ ― ᴛʀᴏʟʟꜱʜᴀᴡꜱ ❝ ꜰᴏʀ ꜱᴛɪʟʟ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ꜱᴏ ᴍᴀɴʏ ᴛʜɪɴɢꜱ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ꜱᴇᴇɴ ɪɴ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ᴡᴏᴏᴅ ɪɴ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ꜱᴘʀɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪꜱ ᴀ ᴅɪꜰꜰᴇʀᴇɴᴛ ɢʀᴇᴇɴ ❞

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oldschoolfrp · 9 months

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It's Valkyries on robot mosquitoes summer (Frank Brunner cover art, White Dwarf 87, March 1987) This issue featured scenarios for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Middle-earth Role Playing, and Paranoia, plus an article about undead for Call of Cthulhu.

#White Dwarf #Frank Brunner #sci fi #fantasy #Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay #WHFRP #Middle-earth Role Playing #Paranoia #Call of Cthulhu #robot #Valkyrie #fantasy castle #Games Workshop #GW #1980s

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eunoiaastralwings · 7 months

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Hop into my inbox and provide a sentence or a rant about which of much ocs would date/marry and why?

As for my ocs, I have their character sheets but also included a brief - I do recommend you at least scan through the character to get a better understanding as int he briefs i only provided small things.

Anyways - I cannot wait to hear what y'all opinions are. I hope you enjoy - have fun, place nice and anons are allowed.

I'll respond to ever ask - even provide the oc thoughts too so you have interactions with them too :)

Lúthriel Tinuviel: daughter of Beren and Lúthien, twin sister of Dior

brief: she's kind, compassionate, grows attached, a part maia who is insecure about her heterochromia eyes. sometimes has trouble navigating her magic, forced to an immortal because of her powers, lost her twin and parents forever - she's bi!

Quildalótien: Valar daughter of lord Oromë and lady Vána.

brief: Valinor!Quilda has a crazy 4D personality, she will embrace fun in your life. She's wild, crazy and fun - already pranked even Manwë a few times. On dates she will pull you into doing pranks with her. ME!Quilda however is on the opposite sit - she is scared easily and you need shower her with love :) - she's a pansexual! She can grow a vast forest, give herself wings, and create creators like Huan.

Cala: Son of Tilion and Arien

Brief: Cala is caring, sweet. He's a panromatic demisexual. strict to the rules of propriety - scowls and lectures if anyone breaks them. the embodiment of 'turning a joke into a lecture' - but he means well because he doesnt want to see you hurt. Concerned if you do so little as clumsily fall. Maia of lunar eclipses.

Ixalië: Maia of Mandos

brief: after having being bullied, and pushed to her death - she is mean and while Lawful chaotic Good, she has sadistic tendencies! She can be easily manipulated into the dark side so keep a watch over her. She doesn't know what love is -you almost have to teach it do her. She is stubborn, single-minded and a born strategist. She's a pansexual but doesn't know it yet.

Cóloniélë: Maia of Nienna

brief: this poor baby is a heartbroken maia who lost the love of her life to Fëanor. The SIndar meaned her Pelineldes meaning Fading Star Woman - Given to her by the Sindar when she is in middle earth as she a star (referring to the light in her) ready to fade away. She needs to learn to love again - heal her own heart. She was the power to heal you mentally, take away your tears to provide you comfort even though she was soul crushing pain when heals someone too. She's a panromatic demisexual.

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findroleplay · 11 months

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21+ She/Her. Looking for 21+ writing partners for some fandom roleplays!

About Me: I write on Discord or through Tumblr messages. I do like to stick to Tumblr for plotting and only hand out my Discord when I know for sure we'll be doing something together. I write in third person, past tense and around 2-4 paragraphs. I can't reply every day because I work full-time Monday through Friday with no set end time so I never know when I'm getting home. I do try my hardest to get posts out within 2-3 days. I'm open to writing NSFW/smut but am also okay with keeping things clean. I have no triggers but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm open to doing anything and everything.

What I'm Looking For: Mainly canon x canon pairings. I'm not opposed to canon x OC. I'm just very picky with those and only do MxM or FxF for them. Most of my favorite ships are MxM, with a smattering of MxF and FxF. I do prefer writing with people who are open to all three so we have a lot of options to discuss. I like canon and canon divergent plots. No AUs that are way out there. I like my writing partners to be communicative, reaching out every few days either with a reply or to let me know if they're busy and it may be while before they can write back.

I do have a lot of ships and am open to discussing others. I'll just be listing the fandoms I'm interested in (in order of most looking for right now to I'll still do but might not be as interested in). Some of them I have a lot of muses for; others only a handful.

Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)

Game of Thrones

Ghost/Clergy Universe

Grand Theft Auto IV

Doctor Who

Deadpool Franchise

Supernatural

Harry Potter Franchise

Fantastic Beasts Franchise

Law & Order (the original show only)

Scream Franchise

Saw Franchise

The Walking Dead

Tolkien Legendarium/Middle-earth Universe

House MD

If interested in working something out, please message me or like this post and I'll message you.

-

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prpfs · 1 year

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30+. She/Her. Looking for 21+ writing partners for some fandom roleplays. 🌹

I like to write through Tumblr messages or on Discord. I write in third person, past tense and usually 2-4 paragraphs. I can't reply every day because of work, but I try my hardest to get responses out within 2-3 days.

I'm mainly looking for canon x canon pairings but will at least listen to OC ideas. I like canon and canon divergent plots. MxM, FxF, and MxF are all fine with me. I'm okay with romantic or platonic pairings and keeping things clean or writing NSFW/smut.

For each fandom, I'll be listing the 2-3 ships I'm most interested in at the moment (with the muse I prefer to write in bold, if I have a preference). I'm definitely open to discussing other ships and can write as plenty of other characters so feel free to bring up other stuff if you see a fandom you like but not a ship you're interested in.

Doctor Who: Eleven x Jack, Ten x Simm!Master, Fourteen x Rose

Game of Thrones: Dany x Margaery, Stannis x Davos, Roose x Sansa

Ghost/Clergy Universe: Dewdrop x Rain, Copia x Dewdrop, Papa IV x Aether

Grand Theft Auto IV: Dimitri x Faustin, Niko x Gerry, Ray x Niko

Grand Theft Auto V: Steve x Devin, Dave x Michael

House of the Dragon: Daemon x Rhaenyra, Daemon x Otto, Alicent x Rhaenyra

House MD: Wilson x House, Chase x House, Taub x Kutner

Middle-earth Universe: Elrond x Lindir, Haldir x Aragorn, Bard x Thranduil

Saw Franchise: Hoffman x Strahm, Schenck x Zeke

Supernatural: Lucifer x Sam, Chuck x Sam, Ketch x Mick

If interested, please message me or like this post and I'll reach out to you.

dm if you're interested

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knittingwithhighlighters · 2 years

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Making a character in D&D is like... "She’s me, but like if I was an owl and also a gambler.”

#started working on a character for what I hope will be my first proper campaign #y'all know it's true #dnd #d and d #dungeons and dragons #dungeons & dragons #also did y'all know middle-earth is part of the wizards of the coast / dnd multiverse now??#roleplay #rpg #tabletop rpg #rpgs #tabletop #tabletop games #tabletop gaming #owlin #gambler #she's also a rogue

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sprintingowl · 1 month

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Positioning, Market Dominance, And Having A Conversation In A Loud Room

So I'm reading Middle Earth Roleplaying 2nd ed. It's part of giant stack of tabletop I got from a publishing friend---and one of many systems I probably wouldn't be reading if I hadn't gotten it as part of a giant stack of tabletop from a publishing friend.

MERP 2e was released in '93, by Tolkein Enterprises, and is a pretty thorough book. It's packed full of nice B&W art. It lets you play as everything from a hobbit to an olag-hai. It uses a d100 system that allows for success with a complication. It's a book that feels intensely and simultaneously like it's ahead of and behind its time.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

MERP 2e has an alignment system, much like dnd at the time, but with twelve axis instead of two. Everything from whether your character is a metaphorical thinker to whether they're a literal thinker to whether they're a socialist or a libertarian is tracked.

Similarly, MERP has a classic six stat spread, but the explanations of the stats are all like "Strength(ST): Not brute musculature, but your ability to use your muscles to your greatest advantage."

And MERP has classes, called Professions, that each come with a little parenthetical explanation after their title. The Warrior's is (Fighter). The Scout's is (Thief). The Animist's is (Cleric).

What you might notice is that this is an officially licensed Middle Earth game *aggressively* defining and contextualizing itself vis a vis DnD. "Here's how our stats are different. Here's why our skill rolls are more granular. But don't worry, you can still play the same party roles. We promise we're not unfamiliar, just different."

Now, I don't know how intentionally-as-a-market-strategy the designers and writers were doing this---DnD's headlock on the industry was certainly less intense then than now---but it's reflective of a kind of design pressure that not only hasn't gone away. It's gotten way more intense.

DnD is roleplaying games. Anything that's not DnD might not be roleplaying games. Or at least, it's suspicious, it might taste weird, it might ruin your ability to have fun or speak english forever.

So in order to be a roleplaying game, you have to ask yourself "how do I fit into DnD?"

A critique I've seen leveled at indie systems sometimes is that they don't properly represent all of the three pillars of DnD. The three pillars is a modern creation. It's a 5e thing. It's specific to DnD. But DnD is roleplaying games, and to be a roleplaying game you need to be DnD.

So you get games as chameleons. You get endless "DnD killers" hoping that what people like about DnD isn't the name but the mechanics, and if you can just do the mechanics *more*, people will like you better. You get five hundred 5e splats. Power Rangers and GI Joe and Stargate all trying to fit into the same engine about swinging at and then missing a large rat. You get Adventure Time throwing out its original system and self-converting into a 5e hack because the market doesn't want things that don't look like DnD---even things that already look like DnD.

And back in '93 you get MERP 2e telling you don't worry, we still have the Thief, we just call it something different in our house.

#ttrpg #ttrpg homebrew #ttrpgs #ttrpg design #indie ttrpgs #rpg #indie ttrpg #tabletop #dnd #rpgs #merp #merp 2nd ed #middle earth #lotr

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vintagerpg · 6 days

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The War of the Lance is over, but the Dragonlance line lives on with DL15: Mists of Krynn (1988, a full two years after DL14). Basically, after the success of the DL-series, TSR wanted to continue making Dragonlance products. The first thing out was Dragonlance Adventures (1987), which opened up the game world to custom character generation. After that, the characters needed something to do, hence this anthology of short adventures (DL16 follows suit as well, but we’ll have to visit that another time — it’s worth the wait, I promise!).

This anthology is a mess. Which is fitting because Dragonlance was always a mess aspiring to ever greater levels of messiness. Taking an ill-advised page from Middle-Earth Roleplaying, the various short scenarios take place in a variety of time periods. During the war, after the war, one right after the Cataclysm. There are Book of Lairs-style monster encounters, too. And the range of levels here is 1 to 15. There’s no through-line. It’s just a bunch of random stuff. A lot of it is undercooked.

Worse, and this is something that generally plagues many Dragonlance products from now through the start of Fifth Age: There is barely any art in this thing, and whats there is just small spot illustrations of items. It’s a big step down. Even the maps are underwhelming. The awesome cover painting by Den Beauvais carries a LOT of the load, but you can’t expect it to carry the entire book!

#tabletop rpg #dungeons & dragons #ttrpg #roleplaying game #rpg #d&d #Dragonlance #DL15 #Mists Of Krynn

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indierpgnewsletter · 5 months

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Fantasy Cities Volume 1

Around a year ago, I published a series looking at city settings from various fantasy games. I looked at 7 cities including Doskvol, Spire, Eversink, The City from a|state, Into the Cess and Citadel, Infinigrad, and Endon from Magical Industrial Revolution. I’ve now taken those 7 essays and expanded and improved them, added 2 more essays on Lankhmar from DCC’s boxed set and Freeport, a Pathfinder 1e city from Green Ronin. This PDF, Fantasy Cities Vol 1, is available now on my patreon.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction

In the history of the fantasy genre, cities have an interesting place. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which created so much of what we consider generic about fantasy, doesn't really care for cities. Which makes sense because the books themselves feel like an elegy for a time before industrialization, a love letter to the countryside - to woods and streams and the sands below your feet. The cities of Middle Earth are, at their best, noble and static, and at their worst, corrupt and fallen to the hubris of man.

The earliest thriving fantasy cities are probably in the sword and sorcery of writers like Fritz Lieber or Michael Moorcock. These stories were influenced by, among other things, the machismo of pulp magazine stories. The cities reflect this. At their best, they're a canvas for male bravado and havens for debauchery and dissolution. At their worst, they're predatory and authoritarian.

In modern fantasy, the city is ascendant. The old tropes withered under post-modernism's sarcastic glare. Now, you get Ankh-Morpork and Bas Lag and many more that capture the contradictions, potential, and romance of cities as places to spend your lives. But what about games? A city in a novel has to be interesting on the page. A city in a game has to be interesting at the table, it has to bear the weight of the imagination of 3-5 people over a shitty internet connection. That's where I started the series affectionately known (by me) as WWTAWWTAC (pronounced whatawhatac), i.e. What We Talk About When We Talk About Cities.

And here’s an excerpt from the new entry on Lankhmar:

Creating a roleplaying game supplement for an existing fantasy city is tricky. It's trickier when it's a place as famous as Lankhmar, the City of the Black Toga, the City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes. Not only are the stories well-loved, the city is an inspiration for other well-loved cities, notably Discworld's Ankh-Morpork which started out as a loving pastiche before evolving into something deeper. (Even the word "ankh" comes from Lankhmar). This means that you have to walk the line between giving fans what they want and making it a useful, usable supplement. Basically, DCC's approach is to not invent any new lore whatsoever - as far as I can see. They lay out what Leiber's originally stories say about Lankhmar and then give themselves permission to colour within the lines with small, inoffensive details. The end result isn't radical or surprising but it does seem genuinely quite good.

I’ve titled it Volume 1 because if we hit the patreon drive’s goal, I’ll do a Volume 2. Maybe I can finally tackle Waterdeep or Ptolus. Maybe I can expand to cities in novels and actually compare them to cities in games directly. Maybe I can look at cities in video games. Where does Dunwall from Dishonored end and Duskwall begin? There’s lots of things to explore!

Thanks to the 30+ folks who signed up last week, we’re currently at 94 out of 150. So if you’re doing okay and able to support, please head over to patreon and subscribe!

Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/fantasy-cities-1-94754443

#indie rpg #ttrpg #ttrpg community #ttrpgsolidarity #ttrpg design #rpg

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haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted · 7 months

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Middle Earth Roleplaying Game - Lost Realm of Cardolan Cover Art by Angus McBride

#Middle Earth #Lord of the Rings #LotR #Middle Earth Roleplaying Game #Lost Realm of Cardolan #Covers #Cover Art #Angus McBride #Fantasy #Art

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aaronsrpgs · 10 months

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"Ancient World Fantasy" Reading List

(A little context to start. If you just want book recs, scroll on down to the first image.)

As I’ve been getting into RuneQuest (Wikipedia link), one striking component of the culture and community surrounding the game is that they’re very into the lore of its fictional world, Glorantha. I’m saying this as a comparison to a game like D&D, where the game is spread across tons of settings with no real sense of obligation to keep things in line with earlier editions.

Glorantha’s canon and worldbuilding has been going on since it was published in 1978 without, as far as I can tell, any big reboots. Which means that, unlike D&D, where people are bringing in all kinds of influences and doing direct adaptions of Jane Austen books and whatever, the RuneQuest game remains pretty tightly tied to the original setting. (There have been some exceptions. But not many!)

But since I run games for people who have ADHD or aren’t interested in studying up, I’ve been looking at all kinds of inspiration to drop into the game. Here are 20 novels that are roughly “ancient world” or “Bronze Age” like RuneQuest and deal with people interacting with strange gods, tight communities, and a world without fast overland travel or transferal of information.

I’m presenting them alphabetically by author’s last name.

The Brazen Gambit, Cinnabar Shadows, The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King by Lynn Abbey

I'm sorry for starting this post off with licensed RPG novels, but these are good! And I don't mean "good for licensed RPG novels." I've read tons of them, and most are so bad! But these are actually fun. Good character development in a sword-and-sorcery world. It's also an ecological apocalypse world, with godlike beings oppressing common folks, leading to a lack of technological advancement and knowledge of the past.

The Long Ships by Frans G. Bentsson

Written in the 1940s as a series of novellas, these stories take you on a tour of the Viking-era world, from Europe to the Middle East and beyond. Like a bunch of books on this list, this places them post-Bronze Age, so they're not officially "ancient world." But it gives a big spread of cultures, from the more clan-based Vikings to the bustling metropolises of Turkey. And it doesn't place any of them on any kind of linear advancement scale or whatever other gross way people "rate" cultures.

Tales of Nevèrÿon and Neveryóna by Samuel R. Delany

The master of weird sci-fi and gay historical novels, Chip Delany also wrote a fantasy epic. And it rules! Set on pre-historical(ish) Earth, these books describe the stories that maybe inform the myths we tell today? Dragons and slave revolts! A sort of "What if Game of Thrones was good?" series. Lots of good stuff about how people learn and how understanding expands.

I'm not listing the third book only because it's also a historical look at New York during the AIDS epidemic. It's an amazing book! But it strays from the "ancient world" aesthetic.

Baudolino by Umberto Eco

Another novel expressly set after the Bronze Age (this one starts in the 12th century). BUT it's about Medieval people's interaction with the knowledge they inherited from the past, specifically the myth of Prester John and the works of Herodotus.

I think I keep putting books like this on the list because roleplaying in a fantastical ancient world is not too far off from how Medieval people might have worshipped and referenced works from ancient Rome and non-European places.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James

One of our best living writers! These are fantasy novels expressly set in a fantastical version of ancient/Medieval Africa. The books explore the same events from multiple points of view and are full of cool magic, awesome spirit combat, and a vast number of places and cultures that actively deconstructs most games's portrayal of fantasy Africa as a homogeneous place.

The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth

I think Kingsnorth has been outted as a sort of eco-fascist? I totally believe it, so feel free to skip this one. It's a historical novel set in England in 1066, as the Normans invade from France. It's written in a faux Middle English language and focuses on the lower classes and how they try to resist the invasion. A good reminder that "Medieval culture" (and especially the Renaissance as a time that "culture advanced") is often based on certain classes of society, such as rich people and/or men.

Iceland's Bell by Halldór Laxness

Speaking of how class intersects with technological advancement, this book is set in the 18th century, but it focuses on Iceland at a time when it was ruled by Denmark, and the lower classes there were under an enforced poverty. It's a book about how a rich Icelander was trying to recover the stories of his people in order to create a sense of national identity and resistance. But it's also a story about how a destitute man acts like a total weirdo when he's not allowed to fish in his own waters and is cut off from understanding his place in history.

The Raven Tower by Anne Leckie

A big part of RuneQuest is people interacting with and enacting their gods. That's what this book is about! And it's about the strange vertigo that comes to people when they try to interact with the impossible timelines that gods exist on. Very good stuff.

Night's Master and Death's Master by Tanith Lee

Ostensibly set on Earth back when it was flat and demons roamed the world, which is basically RuneQuest. Sort of like a series of hornier, gay bibles? With lots of gender fuckery, fun sex, and cool monsters.

Circe by Madeline Miller

The story of the witch from The Odyssey, told from her point of view. Beautiful prose, tragic and beautiful characters, and a great share of mythical strangeness. Perfect if you want to learn how to run NPCs that are adversaries without being shallowly evil.

Ronia, the Robber's Daughter by Astrid Lindgren

Semi-Medieval again, but low class and vague enough that it could exist throughout ancient history. The daughter of a robber grows up in a tower full of robbers and generally has a wonderful time. Lots of weird monsters live in the woods, and there's a great starcrossed romance with someone from a rival robber gang. Perfect inspiration if you're running some cattle-raiding runs in RuneQuest; this is how to make robbers fun and sympathetic.

Read the book, watch the 1984 Swedish movie (which includes a great comedic scene of full-frontal dudity), and then watch the Studio Ghibli series.

A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar

Set in a world of pepper farmers and religious fanatics who worship a mysterious inscribed stone, these books do a great job of showing how people might interact with religion, rival cults, and mystery rites. It also portrays literacy and learning to read in places where it's gated behind social gatekeeping. And once again, the prose is beautiful.

The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola

The first African novel published in English outside of Africa, The Palm-Wine Drinkard is a funny, hallucinogenic story about getting drunk, stumbling through weird landscapes, and encountering fantastical spirits and people.

Tutuola also wrote My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the inspiration for the famous(?) David Byrne/Brian Eno album. I haven't read it yet, but I'm keeping an eye out!

The Green Pearl by Jack Vance

This is a sequel to Lyonesse, which I haven't read because I love staring in the middle of things. Set around a mythical British Isles when Atlantis was still above the sea and part of the group of islands. Some great wizard shit, warring clans, romance, and a wizard whose name is fucking Shimrod (in case you need more convincing).

Those are my 20 novel recommendations! I'm gonna come back to add some nonfiction, comics, and myth resources for running games in fantastical ancient worlds. You can read SpeedRune, my ancient fantasy game, here.

#runequest #books #fiction #fantasy

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wanderingwoodlandslotro · 6 months

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I'm not saying I'm already decorating my Hobbit house for Christmas, buuuuuut...I'm already decorating my Hobbit house for Christmas.

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vixensdungeon · 6 months

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Back in the long-long-ago of 2001 or 2002, baby DM Vivian got a text message from one of her players asking how the elves in Lord of the Rings could be thousands of years old when their maximum age in D&D was 750. I explained to him that Tolkien probably didn't follow the 3rd Edition D&D rules when he was writing.

But he did, of course, use the rules of Rondor ar Rámalócer, an ancient roleplaying game he translated from Quenya! Dave and Gary would later unearth his notes and use them as the basis for their own game, Dungeons & Dragons.

Little known fact, Bilbo Baggins was actually Tolkien's own player character in a campaign ran by a different Loremaster (what his group called the Referee). He'd go on to write a book about his character's adventures, and even ran a campaign of his own centered around a piece of random magical loot his character had acquired, in the process making his friend's unnamed campaign setting a part of his own setting, Middle-Earth, much as Gygax would later incorporate Arneson's Blackmoor into the map of the Great Kingdom, along with the Necromancer (whom he renamed Sauron), who had been part of a solo adventure ran for Gandalf's player whose schedule rarely matched up with the rest of the group.

#dnd #tolkien #middle-earth #dungeons & dragons #true story #lord of the rings #the hobbit

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gontijolab · 2 months

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Role-and-Write games?

Every once in a while I browse through the many design contests on Board Game Geek website. I'm an enthusiast of print-and-play, solitaire wargames and portable stuff myself so it wasn't really a suprise when I ended at the 15th ROLL & WRITE GAME DESIGN CONTEST page today. For those asking themselves what is that,

"[Roll-and-Write Games] are (usually) small and portable games that involve players rolling dice and marking the results on sheets of paper or erasable boards. Another common factor is that marking choices made in previous plays limit a player's marking choices in future plays."¹

When I noticed two hours had already passed and I was looking at all the entries of the last years. I've had some good experiences playing this subgenre of boardgames in the past, but only now I'm asking myself the right question:

Why not add roll-and-write mechanics into Solo RPGs and Gamebooks?

Gamebooks, specifically, are a suitable medium to carry roll-and-write mechanics into their pages. I can't see why they still don't actually. Afterall, they already share a lot of the same traits of R&W

both portable;

both affordable;

both solitaire-first;

both low-cost in terms of production

I believe R&W mechanics could be integrated into gamebooks as subsystems or even just as minigames that would bring some breath into the usual roll-against-attribute loop. Not only that, but they actually allow the writers and the readers to deal with gaming experiences that are simply not possible trough conventional gamebook practices.

Just imagine if you need to ask the player to

map a region with random encounters;

hack into a computer by solving a sudoku-like puzzle;

fix a spaceship engine using creativity;

design and build a fort;

go through a tactical movement combat.

The intersection between gamebooks and boardgames are also not that new

I'm not inventing the wheel here. Barbarian Prince did that in 1981 and and the Middle-Earth Quest Gamebooks actually proposed a very sandboxy hexcrawl mechanic in 1985. Another obscure example is the Nintendo Gamebooks published between 1991 and 1992. Targeted at young children it's main mechanic was all about newspaper style pencil-puzzle challenges. 40 years ago these ideas were being published and I feel the entire Scene has been sleeping on them since then.

I don't have an answer on why that happened. My biased guess would be a purist prejudice against boardgames merging into roleplaying games, but I may be completely delusional of course. I hope so, really. All I know is that I'm already buying, downloading, playing and studying a lot of Roll-and-Write games and seeing the possibilities expanding in front of me.

#game design #ttrpg design #gamebook #featured

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