Lamplight Games

[bruciemilf]

Did I daydream this, or was there a website for writers with like. A ridiculous quantity of descriptive aid. Like I remember clicking on " inside a cinema " or something like that. Then, BAM. Here's a list of smell and sounds. I can't remember it for the life of me, but if someone else can, help a bitch out <3

[bruciemilf]

I FOUND IT BITCHES

[dramono]

This is going to save me so much trouble in the future.

[theresattrpgforthat]

TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Florida

y'all there is an absolutely bonkers deal going on at itch.io right now

You can get over 500 rpgs for only *five dollars* right now. That's right, over $2000 worth of games for only five fucking dollars. It's insane. It's unreal. It's totally worth more than any dollar amount you're going to throw at it. And it's all going towards charities that work with trans folx on the ground: specifically Zebra Youth and Transinclusive Group. If you donate more than $10 you get a special bonus - the creators of Action Fiction will send you a PDF copy of the 5E supplement "Monsters of Murka: Chromatic Gamut." Go check it out now!!! Offer lasts until April 6!

[theresattrpgforthat]

Just realized I didn't include the link so here it is!

[aegisofworms]

My last post has me nostalgic for my old coloring process, so here's some old lancer art I dug up for the Balor and Enkidu frames! I'm Hoping to find the time soon to do all of the frames like I had planned back then (but we'll see how my poor time management skills work out for that haha).

[ostrichmonkey-games]

Dungeon23 Week Two Recap

We're continuing deeper into the Spire of a Thousand Dreaming Stars, and starting to get a few hints at what all that dreaming nonsense might mean! Still totally making this all up as I go, plus experimenting with leaving connections to other areas open for future weeks and rooms.

Three exits. Knee-deep water that deepens to neck-deep at the back of the room. The room is strangely organically shaped and the water glows a soft teal. 6 minor-spirebeasts adapted to the water lurk in the gloom.

The water from room 1/9 pools into this room. 3 sentries (broken). Seemingly broken relatively recently by means unknown. A large pit is in the far corner that looks out into a dark void.

Can be faintly seen through the gloom from room 1/10, across the pit. No obvious way across the pit. A large cube in the center of the room is a depowered fabricator. It can craft most mundane items if powered and fueled.

Door is locked behind a magitech seal. Difficult to pick with mundane tools. Inside a large fungal mass will release a cloud of dream-spores if disturbed. Can scavenge 1d4 Nods from some remains.

A large and long hall of near pitch darkness leads to a large room with a dormant stone-metal construct in the center. It will activate once PCs enter the room. Remains of 4 delvers can be found in the back. There is a hidden exit that leads deeper into the Spire in the floor underneath the construct.

A seemingly empty room. It is actually a "dream-pod", and properly trained PC can spend time here to hurl their consciousness deeper into the Spire.

Partly taken over by natural growth, giving the room an organic feel. A swarm of fire-blights (nanite) hover through the room, but will avoid the recess in the upper corner where a territorial cave-crawler nests.

And that's week two! In the coming weeks I might experiment with mapping styles. Still having a great time with it all so far!

[sstabhmontown]

Transport

Spell Level: Magic-user 5

Range: 10 feet

Duration: Instantaneous

Send yourself or another person and whatever they can lift to a distant place, depending on your knowledge of the site. Count however many you have of: the name of the place, it’s location on a good map, a noted major landmark, having seen the place before, having spent a full week there making notes, and the place being your personal stronghold, and roll a d6. If you are attempting to cross between the world of men and that of the dead, or the heavens, subtract two.

If you roll over your count, you arrive somewhere else: on a 5+, 1d6 leagues off; on a 3–4, 1d8 × 10 leagues distant; or on a 2 (or lower) 1d10 × 100 leagues away. You’ll have to make a Saving Throw, or end up mixed up in whatever local trouble is about, whether the lair of a beast or monster, a delicate social occasion, or isolated in mountains, desert, or at sea.

This version inspired by Delta.

[aaronsrpgs]

This is the kind of OSR + PbtA stuff that I strive to write.

[lamplightgames]

City23 Week 2

The reservoir has several legends and stories about a mysterious river serpent. No one has ever seen it in person, but it is a good excuse for why fishing is not as successful in this area.

I think this week was a little tougher, due to how much water I chose to draw vs. land. It did provide a good opportunity to draw a big ol' snake! I also got some watercolours from a friend for Christmas and figured this was a good time to try them - probably won't be something I continue in the future. Who's to say though - the year is still young!

[betterlegends]

Dungeon23: Week 2, The Cemetery Gardens and Appendix N of Dungeon Media — Better Legends

The second full week! We find ourselves traveling west, through the room of masks and ending up in a big weird graveyard, where the tombstones grow like crooked teeth. I’ve been thinking about that room for a while now, and I’m glad to have it somewhere on paper. Having a graveyard in a setting is a

[nebmia]

When people talk about Blades in the Dark they usually bring up a few big headline mechanics (flashbacks, clocks, load, position/effect etc) and they should because they are really good mechanics. But there are a lot of little things in blades that I think are really important for creating the whole experience and in some cases not all though) are unusual in ttrpgs. SO I thought I'd list some them.

You can't leave:

The 'standard' (but not universal) mode for ttrpgs is 'the adventure' where you travel from place to place seeing new stuff, meeting different people, looting new ruins, solving new problems etc. There might be a hub that you often return to but generally roving about is a core element. And its obvious why this is appealing! But it has two downsides: 1) the players can very easily run away from the consequences of their actions and 2) and the players are constantly being faced with new stuff that they don't really have the hooks to latch onto yet.

In contrast Doskvol is a pressure cooker. Want to leave? Tough! the whole world out there is dead and will kill you. Everything you do will create more characters and plot hooks and conflicts all ready to be pulled into the narrative at any point. If you piss off another faction you can't just skip town, you have to face up to the consequences of your actions. And as you play the players will become more and more immersed in the city and develop a deep understanding of what it going on there.

2. You're a gang of criminals:

A common (again, not universal) base assumption of many games is that you are good guys doing fundamentally heroic things. And this tends to encourage a somewhat reactionary style of play where you are presented with a bad thing that is happening and then attempt to resolve it. In contrast being criminals is a much more proactive endeavor. There isn't a clear threat that needs to be overcome. There's just a situation and its up to you to get what you want out of it.

The scope of play available when you are playing as scoundrels rather than heros is also so much wider. Note you aren't evil, which is equally restrictive. You will do good things and bad things, and struggle so much more with the question of when you can afford to be good and just how bad you are willing to be. You don't just always step up to save the world but instead pursue the things that actually matter to your character, because being a criminal allows your character to be selfish in a way a hero can't be and that massively helps in creating a player driven game.

But you aren't just criminals, you're a gang of criminals, with shared goals and resources and a character sheet to go with it. This really forges a group identity that transcends what is possible in the traditional party (which is essentially just a group of individuals who happen to be in the same place). The crew gives everyone at the table a clear basic goal: build your crew; expand your crime empire. And this is a fundamentally player driven goal! Normally systems reserve this sort of 'domain level' play for high level characters (ie the ones most people never play) but blades puts you there right from the off.

3. Experience:

At the end of each session you go round the table and discuss instances of when each player 'addressed a challenge with [core activities of their playbook]', 'expressed their beliefs, drives, heritage, or background', or 'You struggled with issues from their vice or traumas during the session'. This is incredibly lightweight but also very effective.

Firstly it means everyone at the table is always going to be thinking about and making space for expression of their character and creating problems which is something that can easily be sidelined in favor of optimally addressing the challenges you are facing when there isn't this codified incentive.

And secondly the fact that it is at the end of the session creates this great debrief situation where you go over the highlights of the session and maybe dig a little deeper into why your character acted in the ways they did, which just brings the whole table into having a deeper understanding of each others characters. Again, notice 'drives' as a potential XP trigger. The game rewards (and therefore encourages) motivated characters.

In addition of personal XP you also have crew XP with a similar set of triggers (goals and drives come up again), which really supports building a crew identity, encouraging the crew to be proactive, and centering it as 'the main character' of the game.

4. Rivals:

The concept of rivals only gets a few words in the Blades rules. It appears on each playbook with a list of potential rivals (Just a name and a couple of words of description each) and then again it appears on when you are setting up a scenario in a sentence saying 'Are any enemies or rivals interfering in the operation?' That's barely enough to call it a mechanic. But its incredibly effective! You automatically get a small cast of revolving antagonists, each with some personal connection to a player character, who just keep popping up and causing problems. And 'oh shit, not this guy again! I hate this guy!' is a really great way to tie things together and get players invested in what's going on.

5. Just enough world building:

Blades gives you quite a lot of material to work with on the world of Doskvol. Certainly enough to build out the broad picture. But it is also absolutely chock full of (deliberate) gaps. What this leaves is for you to fill in the gaps to create your version of Doskvol (And it can be quite fun to compare notes with other groups playing blades). The book tells you there is a conspiracy in a faction but it won't tell you who's behind it. The book tells you people are gathering ancient artifacts, but it won't tell you where they come from or what exactly they do. And this means that you can easily set the answer to be whatever would be appropriate for your game. Or even discover the answer through playing!

The book being full of prompts but largely devoid of answers is a very useful tool for the somewhat free form, improvisational style of the game because there will always be things to inspire you but you never need to worry and pausing the game to check what the official stance on something is.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In general I think the sort of thing I have been talking about is something blades excels at: really lightweight elements that end up having significant impact. A final example of that is the trauma system, which is essentially two sentences long:

If you get too much stress you get a trauma ( one of: cold, haunted, obsessed, paranoid, reckless, soft, unstable, viscous). If you struggled with issues from your trauma this session, gain an xp.

And from that very simple mechanic flows characterisation, character development, and the players deliberately creating more problems for themselves!

Anyway, that's what comes to mind at the moment. I'll add more stuff if I think of it.

You should play Blades in the Dark, its very good.

[velebita]

check it out I think there's some kind of dungeon back here

[lamplightgames]

City23 Week 1

We find ourselves at the very top of the reservoir, where many start to define the edge of the city proper. Logs cut down by the Waterlogged Logging Co. make their way down the river, often ridden by workers or travelers looking to rest their feet at the end of their journey to the city.

That's the first week done! It's been nice to sit down after work each day to write and sketch for just 5 minutes; I don't know if I'm going to be able to take the time to ink the sketches every week though.

[betterlegends]

The first FULL week of D23 for me.It was nice to wake up, drink some coffee and have something to chew on in the way that I imagine some people use a crossword puzzle. I took the tact of just writing rooms throughout the week and waiting until today to do my map. I just couldn’t commit to the random room placement, but perhaps I will relinquish control as the project goes on.

I’m very much looking forward to finding out where the underwater secret passage in that treasure chest goes.

I’m playing it kind of ambiguous with the treasure, but I imagine some of the paintings might still be worth a bit of money to a collector, and that crystal is probably the kind of thing an enterprising group of psychopaths would try to remove and carry off to the surface. I know if I were playing my dwarf Bludoon here he would be gathering samples of the vines for cooking and would probably want to see what Fire Beetle tasted like.

I’m feeling confident about the pace of this being fairly easy to maintain at the moment, but it is after all the first week of January and they say that everyone gives up on their resolutions by the end of this month. Here’s to trying to get a bit farther than that!

[temporalhiccup]

So this time I experimented with pulling a tarot card and keeping it out of the deck for the whole week. Normally I'd shuffle the card back in and see if it comes up again, and I think I'll try that next week.

I'd also draw the next day's card and leave it on my desk, just to give it time to settle in. I wouldn't actually think about what I was going to write, not consciously, but it was nice leaving a little intentional magic overnight.

Strangely enough we have The Devil and Queen of Cups again, but also every Eight from the four suits showed up: Eight of Swords, Eight of Cups, Eight of Wands, and Eight of Pentacles. Hmmm!

This week I also added mechanics. Who knows what they do! We'll find out I guess!

I Am The Dungeon

Week 2, January 2-8

I was once majestic, ethereal in presence and beauty. It did not matter that my words were hollow and ever-shifting, that my heart was a play thing meant to be reshaped in the hands of the undeserving.

The Star - Fallen from great heights, shattered against cruel crystal.

My love, my beauty faded long before you saw the truest form of me. Do not blame yourself for the lies I was created to serve.

All that remains of me is translucent crystal, edges sharpened by constant despair, floating in a lake of tears.

Prove your love for me and dive deep into the water.

Cut yourself on what remains of my bitterness and spite.

Together we will see the color of your blood in what remains of me.

Together we will see if you are human or monster.

Eight of Swords - Item: The Blind Sword - Gain 1D6 or draw one card

A statue wearing the face of a familiar dream bars the path. A multitude of eyes float around them. Should you take the sword they will take the moments necessary to close every eye, one by one, before crumbling into dust.

The Devil - Item: The Horned Helm of the Fallen Star - If donned, gain 1D6 or draw one card

On the wall an ancient mask is chained to weakened stone. The mask's eyes come to life when you draw near, glowing a dusky petulant red. Should you choose to not wear the mask, ask a question and receive forbidden wisdom.

Eight of Cups - Obstacle: Despair, a test of hope everlasting

The paths of your mind are treacherous my love, the whispers of generations silenced and suffocating. What of your heart will you burn to light the torch of hope?

Queen of Cups - Persona: Love's Sorrow. Regain Whispers.

The corridors echo the remnants of memories that have yet to come to pass. He runs his fingers through your hair, and you change, change, change, for love.

Ace of Swords - Obstacle: The Wound, a test of perseverance.

Your senses give way to waking dreams, and you realize an unseen wound is bleeding out. Pulled out from your veins and flesh is:

1-2 What remains of your past

3-4 What you hope for the future

5-6 Your will to remain in the present

Will your flesh give way and lose it all, or will you sacrifice something precious to heal the wound?

Eight of Wands - Persona: Swarm. Regain Whispers.

Eight doors lie before you. Your body twists and reshapes itself, becoming eight different animals. When your many paws and snouts and teeth break open the doors, what do your many eyes see?

Eight of Pentacles - Obstacle: Miasma, a test of truth.

In the center of an endless space floats an upside down black pyramid. A bruise-purple haze emanates from it. A colossal cat, large enough for its back to push aside the clouds and whiskers to disrupt the winds, slinks around the pyramid. They ensnare you with their gaze, the headlights of their eyes burning through you.

What truthful story do you tell the Great Night Cat, knowing your words will become lies by the end of the telling?

The illusion of hope is most cruel in the darkness of despair, sharpened across the generations.

[moist-von-lipwig]

the realest Discworld reading order is simply 'whatever the hell the local library has available, in whatever order it becomes available'

[goblincow]

D23 ready. Download this journal or any of the other cool resources that people have made on itch.io here.

There never was an end. There never will be a beginning.

The hallway stretches on and on. A door neatly painted in a familiar burnt orange stands resolute at one distant length. A brass handled door dressed in bevelled black waits at the other.

The choice is an illusion.

Sooner or later I will walk though the door. Sooner or later I will stop opening doors.

I have not yet done so, though I am under no illusion that this is because I will some day open a door and discover that I am free.

Instead I am renewing my endeavour to maintain a record of the doors through which I pass, in the hope that one day it might serve someone else.

[goblincow]

Ok I think I'm gonna do d23 but I'm gonna do it a bit different.

I will have a diary just for it and every day I will add SOMETHING be it an illustration or a passage of text or a "room" description because I'm designing an endless forest graveyard and oh no you don't remember how you got here and you don't remember a time before and we're going to figure out the mystery together day by day.

I might even draw a tarot card for each week? I mean what is even the difference between making up a dungeon and playing an rpg (there isnt one). I've got some spooky washi tape, I'm just gonna have a good time.

[goblincow]

Update:

A6 Journal Collection for Dungeon23

54 printable zine-fold dot-grid weekly A6 journals - for Dungeon23 A free printable collection of 54 coloured A6 dot-grid journals for Dung

[betterlegends]

[lamplightgames]

I adore this - having only “A stone stair” on the first day but by the end of the week a very evocative image of descending into this dungeon

[temporalhiccup]

I wasn't sure what to do in the lead up to the "actual dungeon", since the page included the days before January 1. I drew seven cards and seven rituals revealed themselves.

It's very nice to return to a dreamy flow of consciousness sort of writing (and I absolutely recognize my trans feelings bursting through and flooding the page), but I'm taking to heart the intention setting tarot reading and just going with it.

I'm also enjoying putting together these "covers", but I'm promising myself that I'm only spending 5-10 minutes on each one. This is another creative constraint for the project to manage my energy. (Once again, images from Unsplash.com)

(the VERY COOL THING is I started putting together the cover days before I pulled cards, so I had no idea the Devil card and its prominent skull was going to show up...)

Seven Rituals, Seven Steps

Seven ways to Enter the Dungeon

Seven ways to Become the Dungeon

The Devil - The Ritual Begins

Two halves of you bound: one false and fat on the lies fed to it, spirit skeletal and despair dripping off her bones.

One bound yet barely held together, seeking escape even if it means a temporary oblivion.

My love, take a deep breath and close all your eyes, even the ones on your palms.

The Devil will come to take his due, I will pay him in bone and song.

Now, run. Run and take both halves with you, leave your closed eyes and held breath with me.

Run, there will be no looking back, no hesitation or regret.

Run,

My love.

Queen of Cups: The Ritual of Water - To enter the dungeon that you are, dive into the water of your memories. Drown pain, drown despair, drown drown drown drown drown.

The Hierophant: The Ritual of Second Sight - To enter the dungeon that you are, take two hands two keys, two promises. Make a promise to each half, tell one lies and the other truth. Tell them the same thing. Regain whispers.

Ace of Cups: The Ritual of the True Promise - To enter the dungeon that you are, observe one of your halves. Fed on truth or lies, it offers you a chalice. It is filled with

Dreams

Promises

Time

Blood

Tears

Memories of him

Nine of Wands: The Ritual of Wounding - To enter the dungeon that you are, feel the tarnished dagger that appears at your side, deep in your bone and blood. What does it cut away? What song do you sing as it does?

Queen of Wands: The Ritual of the Cat - "A tad dramatic, aren't we?" the black cat says, arching its back and flickering its tail to dislodge the stars. "Pace yourself."

The Magician: The Ritual of Intention - To enter the dungeon that you are, feel the magic rising in you now, know that there is only the awakening. Name the magic that pours out of your eyes, mouth, pores of your skin.

The Empress: The Ritual of Naming - She emerges from your shadow, resplendent in glory you cast aside. What name have you discarded that she wears proudly?

A cracked crown bleeds from your hands. What does it hold and protect?

Regret

Love

Pain

Hope

Lies

Power

Name the stars that gather around you both, decide what you will do with the crown.