LackOfTrumpets

Definitely a TTRPG game designer and pixel artist. May possibly be a dragon.

[grootficguy]

“Every Pokemon is someone’s favourite” I’m making a spreadsheet to see if this is true. Reblog with your favourite Pokemon in the tags.

Here’s the spreadsheet in-progress

[grootficguy]

Ok, mother of GOD that's a lot of responses and I am but one man with Excel. I'll update these ASAP but also some rules:

A Pokemon only counts for itself, not its evolution line.

A Pokemon with multiple forms (like Zygarde) will only be counted for the specified form. A Pokemon with multiple appearances (like Spinda, Vivillon, Sylvally, etc.) count for all their appearances.

I'm literally doing this as a testament to my own depression that not everyone is lovable, so add that to the weight of this post's meaning.

[galacticsabc]

did a desk-mat illustration for a friend of mine with some eeveelution mimikyus!

You can take a look at it here!

[rockoyu]

art fight revenge!! pride by @lackoftrumpets

[lackoftrumpets]

I loved this revenge so much, thank you!

[overthelazydog]

And that's a wrap for the lil pride icons!! Thank you so much everyone

[lackoftrumpets]

Art Fight is almost here! I can't wait to get started!

Art Fight

An art gifting game

[lackoftrumpets]

Getting some artfight prep done before the team announcement tomorrow!

[hr-bananabird]

Some government assigned fursonas I designed for some non-furry followers on Misskey.

[lackoftrumpets]

Ok, so, the game is d20 based and uses 6 attri- hey where are you going?

Ya got me. Conspiring Creatures follows the formula that a lot of people know and are understandably sick of. Your character has 6 attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma) that decide how good they are at certain tasks. To accomplish those tasks, the player rolls a d20 and tries to roll higher than certain number to accomplish a success. I'm a big advocate for using other dice systems and that is something I've done for pretty much all my other games. So why change to something I'm not a big fan of? Other than me being a massive hypocrite (which is true), here is why this is my plan. The game is intentionally derivative: Conspiring Creatures is about being the villainous BBEG in a heroic fantasy game. While the game has its own setting and monsters, I wouldn't be surprised if players wanted to replicate villains from the heroic fantasy games they enjoyed fighting or maybe even ran as a GM (mostly from D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2e). Having these six stats be familiar to TTRPG players coming from that part of the hobby would prevent part of the headache of "how do I build a character to represent this fantasy?". The d20 being the main die also falls into this category as well. For the few playtests of this game I have run, simply using the pitch of "its D&D, but you're evil" is a lot easier of a pitch for people to believe when they see the same die they have been using for the last 5 years. The game designer in me wants to do the whole "I could do that better" thing: Shocker, I know. One thing that bugs me about a lot of systems that have this stat spread is that there is always 1-2 stats that get relegated to "dump stat" status. This stat usually being Strength or Charisma (sometimes Intelligence) depending on if your character uses a melee weapon or not. For this system, I wanted to make it so every stat will give a character a spot light to shine while also a weakness they can't ignore. Giving each part of the system's core mechanics an ability score to work with and then force the players to choose a -1 means that their character can't be amazing at everything because they have the systems knowledge to put it in the right spot so it never becomes relevant. Below is the list of aspects that ability bonuses affect right now and it also includes a few things that people might be familiar with if they are not a fan of this type of game, mainly Darkvision and Perception. I'll try my best to write about this later and not forget that I wanted to write more blog posts about this game again (woops).

I want the questionable results of a d20: For anybody who has made a game around a d20, one thing you quickly learn is that there are a lot of number between 1 and 20 that can radically change how a session goes. A heroic fantasy adventurer can quickly become incompetent if they can't roll higher than an 8 and their bonuses can't make success consistent. A great way to kill the vibe at any table. For Conspiring Creatures, player characters have large bonuses to work with alongside fairly low target numbers. The opposite is mostly true for NPCs (with a few exceptions, but that will be for a different post). This game is designed to be a power fantasy after all. I want players to be rolling high and feel good for rolling those numbers, but if power ever goes to their head, those terrifying low numbers can still show up and make them realize why so many villains lose due to their overconfidence. For NPCs, I want most of them to fall over like a stack of dominos, but still leave a small random chance that any of them can make an immortal being bleed. It also makes it so if there is a large number of them the chance of them rolling the higher result more likely, but that is the boring answer.

Thanks for reading to the bottom of all of this! In news that probably shocks nobody who has read this blog, I'm bad about posting about the games I'm working on. I say I'm going to do one thing and go radio silent as I get distracted by something else. The game itself is pretty much finished mechanically and just needs formatting alongside some artwork I'm going to add. I hope to continue making more regular posts about this game because it is something I really need to get better at. Thank you for dealing with my weird posting! It will probably happen again.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Been thinking of organizing a crowdsourced megandungeon jam (basically everyone creates a small dungeon and at the end we stitch them together into a megadungeon) Would anyone be interested in participating in it?

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Okay this post has had a really positive reception so I went ahead and created the jam.

A game jam from 2025-02-14 to 2025-03-31 hosted by imsobadatnicknames. Welcome to the Delve of the Dark Moon Game Jam. In this jam, we invit

Rules:

Each dungeon should contain at the very least a map and a map key. Use general system-agnostic descriptions of all dungeon features and contents, but you may optionally include stats for your dungeon game of choice.

Include at least two doors or passages leading in/out of your dungeon to serve as possible connection points.

If a whole dungeon sounds like an overwhelming task to undertake, you may also submit a single dungeon room.

There is no submission limit, if you have the inspiration for it you may submit as many entries as you want.

You may submit works you have previously published as long as they comply with the rules.

By joining this jam you agree to allow me as the organizer to reproduce your submitted work for the purposes of creating the final digital booklet and map. 

Guidelines:

If possible, format your submission in the form of either A4 spreads (210mm X 296mm) or A5 singles (210mm x 148mm) in order to make it easier to compile them into a single digital booklet.

Don't worry about making it look polished or professional, bring as much DIY feel as you want or need.

The theme, concept, and background of your dungeon is completely free, let your creativity flourish. While this is a general fantasy-themed dungeon, don't be afraid to mix in weirder stuff. A crashed spaceship or an interdimensional portal can easily be part of a dungeon.

Feel free to charge whatever you want for your submission on your itch.io page. However, you are heavily encouraged to make community copies (or some other means of accessing it for free) available at least for the duration of the jam. 

Feel free to ask for tips or share resources in the community threads of the jam. 

[lackoftrumpets]

Setting the Stage for the Game. What is it and the Core Gameplay Loop

A common thing that most TTRPGs have is the section dedicated to "what is a TTRPG?" While I believe these sections are very useful, I doubt that most people will pick this game up as there very first because it is playing on the conventions of another tabletop genre. Instead, I made a section dedicated to what the game is, what it is not, and the loop of the game. I figured this would be more useful as players could use this section to gauge their group's reactions to the game and also give a nice place to start with on how a GM might run the game.

[lackoftrumpets]

Conspiring Creatures: Who knew world domination was so difficult?

Averia was once a lush and beautiful world, until it was overtaken by humans. They constructed their kingdoms, ravaged lands with their wars, and plundered the environment. They were forever at each other's throats until they all consolidated into one grand power, The Nor Empire. Now all the humans live under one iron fist that has forced the existing monsters into hiding and created its own monsters by trying to hold onto its power. As centuries past, the empire looks to be indestructible, to the point where the horsemen of the apocalypse throw up their hands and simply leave the place. However, this hasn't stopped the monsters of the world from striking against the empire. Whether it is a desire for revenge, to return the world to its natural state, assimilate everyone into a single hivemind, or steal the tyrannic throne for themselves, a rogues gallery of conspiring creatures are looking to end The Nor Empire, once and for all. This is the set up for the next TTRPG project I'm apart of! Players will take on the roles of the monstrous creatures scheming to overthrow an entire empire. They'll use otherworldly abilities, claim lots of territory, and conduct masterful machinations in order to achieve the ultimate goal, take over the world for whatever purpose they desire. I'm excited to share more about this upcoming project in the coming days! Up first will be the core mechanics of the game and what creatures players will be plotting as!

[lackoftrumpets]

Hoping to get back into the swing of game designing alongside being evil in games about being heroes

Well its been a while since I've posted anything game related. I've been bouncing between slowly chipping away at Extraordinary Expedition and a lot of other smaller game ideas I haven't been the happiest with. Finally, I think I have something I'm happy with. Almost two years ago, I made a game called We Swim Below for the 2023 Street Grimoire TTRPG Jam . It was a game about a cult of sea serpents scheming to overthrow the surface world. When I was creating the game, I was trying to think about players controlling the villains of an eldritch horror game, slowly taking over and corrupting the lands around them. Out of all the games I created that year, I would say that one is probably my favorite despite its many flaws (I still love the tarot cards I made for it). As more time goes by this idea of a game about scheming and plotting is something that comes to my mind every once in a while. While I always make time for running smaller indie games (I still need to make my 2024 played list!), I still spend a lot of my time playing and running D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2e. They're the two most popular games, so its a lot easier to find people to play them with. I'm also usually not the picky about the system being played as long as I'm with friends. One trend I noticed being apart of these heroic fantasy games is that a lot of players (mostly my friends) usually go about their heroic quests in the least heroic ways possible. It's not uncommon for them to create their own elaborate schemes to counter the elaborate schemes of their foes, usually leaving behind a mess bigger than the one they were trying to clean up. For some people this would be understandably frustrating, but I did enjoy seeing my players being forces of chaos, even though the systems weren't great at supporting it. So it got me thinking. Why don't I just make a system to support these machinations? And that's what I've been working on! I'm hoping over the next few days to share more of Conspiring Creatures and actually finish a TTRPG because its been so long! Hope you stick around for more!

[foxes-in-love]

[lackoftrumpets]

What Indie TTRPG Did You Play This Week Masterpost

From what it looks like, tags placed in tumblr community don't seem to reference the community, they just seem to reference the rest of the website. So for now I'm going to have this post act as an archive for each week's post. If you want to see what different indie TTRPGs were being played each week, this is the place to be!

1/5/2025-1/12/2025: What is a Indie TTRPG that you find yourself coming back to play regularly? 12/29/2024-1/5/2025: What Indie TTRPG are you looking forward to coming out this year? 12/22/2024-/12/29/2024: What was your favorite Indie TTRPG that you played this year?

12/15/2024-12/22/2024: How do you/your group plan scheduling for your games? 12/8/2024-12/15/2024: What's your favorite monster in an Indie TTRPG?

12/1/2024-12/8/2024: What's your favorite die to roll?

11/24/2024-12/1/2024: What weather effects have your characters endured in indie TTRPGs?

11/17/2024-/11/24/2024: What inside jokes do you share with any other indie ttrpg players?

11/10/2024-11/17/2024: What NPCs did the characters in your game(s) meet? 11/3/2024-11/10/2024: What items were found in the games you played this week? 10/27/2024-11/3/2024: What is the funniest result you have gotten on a random roll table? 10/20/2024-10/27/2024: Do you have any memories of playing a session that was made for Halloween (or just any holiday in general?)

10/13/2024-10/20/2024: What's the weirdest thing that happened in your session?

10/6/2024-10/13/2024: What is something you are looking forward to in an upcoming session? 9/29/2024-10/6/2024: What spooky TTRPGs are you planning to play (or have already played) this month?

9/22/2024-9/29/2024: How did things go right or wrong for the characters in the game you played?

9/15/2024-9/22/2024: Are there any mechanics in a system you played this week that you want to use in a different game?

9/8/2024-9/15/2024: What TTRPG art inspired you?

9/1/2024-9/8/2024: Did you try any new systems? 8/25/2024-9/1/2024: The First Post!

[lackoftrumpets]

We're up to 20 of these posts now! If your curious what Indie TTRPGs people have been playing each week, here is the place to check it out!

[sleepysealion]

Poppy New Year!

[snipdoodle]

Cate at low resolutions

I did the bottom one in class. Which is why it looks. worse

[astroma-arts]

Singing to the sea