ttrpg design blog @ostrichmonkey-games - Tumblr Blog

Been getting more followers recently, so time for a pinned post!

I'm Josh and I make tabletop role-playing games and games related things. What sort of things, you may ask? Here's a quick sampler of some greatest hits;

Vibe Check: Enter the Inversion - a The World Ends With You inspired action-fashion game.

DEATHGRIND!!MEGASTRUCTURE - a post-human, brutalist, over-the-top game of delving through a massive galaxy spanning structure.

Fractal Romance - a surreal hangout where you explore the randomly generated Fractal Palace.

EXTRACAUSAL - a build-your-own supernatural conspiracy game. Inspired by everything from X-Files, Fringe, and Control.

Layers of Unreality - a procedurally driven crawl through the liminal spaces between reality for the game Liminal Horror.

Into the Riverlands - a system neutral fantasy setting full of spooky forests, god-fish, and more.

I've also contributed to a bunch of stuff like Gila RPG's Slayer's Almanac, KeganEXE's In Extremis: Season of Discovery, and Rae Nedjadi's Apocalypse Keys!

If you want to check all my stuff out, head on over to my itch.io page!

I like talking and writing about game design, and try to post about there here. I'm always open to questions about different elements of design and making your own ttrpgs!

You can check out some of my larger in-progress games in over here;

Dark Confluence

Furry Crime Game (name pending)

Stampede Wasteland

#indie ttrpgs #ttrpg design #ttrpg #ostrichmonkey games

prokopetz

Look, when you see someone talking about a particular bit of tabletop RPG rules tech and your first reaction is "well, that just doesn't sound practical", your first question should be whether you've actually identified a problem, or whether you've merely assumed without justification that every part of the game in question other than the bit you just read about is identical to Dungeons & Dragons.

prokopetz

You need to understand that I get "but that doesn't make sense because how would it interact with levelling up" like three times a week.

jp-nichts

The Takahe

Curious about the mech on the cover of Reactors & Romance?

The frame is called the Takahe. It's named after a flightless bird from New Zealand of the same name. Even though the mech's "tail feathers" are massive jump jets meant to get this thing soaring!

Lore wise, its a frame designed for mobility and exploration of both terrestrial and space environments. The cockpit is located in the chest, and has an expanded compartment to provide barebones living quarters for extended away missions. Since the pilot isn't located in the head, it's head packed with various sensors and long ranged coms. Perfect for surveying and keeping in contact with distant teammates. It might not have the versatility of arms to pick-up different weapons on the fly, but it's head mounted weapons have exceptional accuracy due to the dampeners in it's neck. These dampeners do have the unintended side effect of making the head bob like a pigeon or chicken when the frame is running pigeon

Like most of my mech designs this one originally started off as a Lego build of mine for the game Mobile Frame Zero. A table top wargame that uses Lego mechs as minis. It's a lot of fun by the way. You should check it out HERE (I think I still have some of my bird mechs featured on their website)

My Lego Takahe build is actually a larger version of my Kiwi mech. Which is very similar in design to the Takahe, just smaller and cuter. I love these little guys and have made so many of them over the years.

Like... sooooo many! I have a whole Pride collection of them with each one colored as a different pride flag.

Here is the first painting I did of the Takahe, which also inspired the color pallet for Reactors & Romance.

I also did some pixel art of the mech too. I was hoping to use for a Lancer game, but that didn't happened. I did get to include it as part of my NPC roster for a game of Celestial Bodies that I ran! The players did a great job completely obliterating my children 😂

corsairesix

A playbook about coming back from the dead.

The Returned is now up on RPG Trader! If you want to play as Jason Todd, Cypher, Jean Grey, or Magik in Masks, this playbook is for you.

theresattrpgforthat

FIST Online Playkit

FIST is a tabletop roleplaying game about paranormal mercenaries, written by @claymorerpgs. A friend of mine was interested in running the game, so I put together a play-kit in the event that they managed to get a game up and running!

The game uses a rudimentary database to help you reference various character abilities, and also has instructions on how to expand your sheet should you level up more than what this sheet can hold.

It also has a page for some standard safety tools, as well as a link to the page where you can buy the game.

You can check out the playkit here! I also have an ever-growing library of playkits, which you can check out at the link below.

Clicky.

I also do playkit commissions! You can take a look at this sheet if you're interested in hiring me to make a digital character sheet for your ttrpg.

sahonithereadwolf

Enchilada and robots by Bramble Wolf Games on Patreon. Join Bramble Wolf Games's community for exclusive content and updates.

New Patreon Post, learn about enchiladas, the new Protect The Sacred Playbook "The Promethian", and that cool werewolf tactics video game I wanna make.

(That means got another playbook for mostly nonhuman folks and at least two more left before stretch goals.)

dungeonofthedragon

Kiwi RPG spotlight: Day Two

It's Kiwi RPG Week! While ideally you'll hear about kiwi ttrpg content year round, this is the week where we really focus on sharing the cool stuff made by our community- from standalone games, to supplements, to actual plays.

This year, I'm going to introduce a kiwi-made rpg each day! I missed day one, but hey: Kiwi RPG Week is actually 8 days long anyway.

First up:

Whakawhitinga nā Riwhi Kenny (@takataapui)

(Ko Kai Tahu, ko Te Ātiawa ōna iwi)

Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua. I walk backwards into the future, with my eyes fixed on the past. Māori whakataukī

Whakawhitinga quickly became one of my favourite worldbuilding games when I watched it streamed last Kiwi RPG Week. It uses the structure of a Māori creation history to develop a world: from environmental aspects like plants and waterways, to people and their beliefs and values.

The sequence of spoken phrases between each of the game's five phases is what really brings the experience together. There's something about chanting these lines with your friends that gives you a real feeling of moving from one phase of existence to another. It's extremely cool.

If you're interested, you can read more about Whakawhitinga and pick up the game on Itch or RPG Trader! RPG Trader is also the only place to grab a physical copy, unless you happen upon Riwhi at a zine fair.

sprintingowl

You Bet Your Teeth

Happy Monday!

Here's a horrible short ttrpg about an economy in which you have to gamble your teeth on a teeth gambling app to do anything.

Teeth Teeth RPG

dungeonofthedragon

RPG Trader: free RPG day bundle

This thing is HUGE! 250 titles in the digital bundle...definitely worth checking out!

Over $1,000 worth of digital and print content from more than 250 creators all across the RPG Trader community.

Some Big Titles in this one, including:

Rosewood Abbey

Bump in the Dark

Spindlewheel

APOCALYPSE FRAME

WYRM

Inspirisles

And plenty of Mausritter, Mothership and D&D supplements!

dungeonofthedragon

Last day to grab this amazing deal! My post-apocalyptic Tron game, Rollback., is also in this bundle.

ladytabletop

The Curse of House Rookwood by Nerdy Pup Games

I think ttrpgs in general can run into this issue of not knowing when to cut a scene. This timer method is an interesting strategy for not letting things drag out. I know we all have had a game that thought everything had to be chronological and skipping time was next to impossible if the characters weren't sleeping, and yet nothing really was happening in the time we could have skipped.

crackerjackalopegames

A Witch's Pilgrimage - Out Now!

My latest solo RPG, A Witch's PIlgrimage, is out now! You are a witch travelling through the world collecting ingredients for a ritual to bring your familiar back to life.

Roll dice on a sheet of paper to create a map, then travel through each point collecting ingredients (represented by playing cards). At the end of the game, you'll make a hand out of the cards you collect to determine the power of your spell and whether you get to see you familiar again.

The game is available on Itch.io now!

Sample pages under the cut:

Whoops! I've been pretty atrocious at sharing patreon updates over here. Time for a grab bag of cool stuff I've been working on!

Riverlands

First, I whipped up some Riverlands themed classes for use with Down We Go. The Small Captain (you get a boat!), Trickster-Poet, Marsh Apiarist, and both the Greenfinger and Redfinger (those who use flora based magic and those who use fauna based magic).

Riverlands & Green Wandering 6/8/26 by Ostrichmonkey Games on Patreon. Join Ostrichmonkey Games's community for exclusive content and update

Also working on some maps for the Riverlands: Stoneside zine!

Riverlands: Stoneside Update! by Ostrichmonkey Games on Patreon. Join Ostrichmonkey Games's community for exclusive content and updates.

Wandering Green

Wandering Green is the new title for my Mushishi inspired ttrpg! The text is basically complete (barring future editing post-playtesting) and patrons also get a laid out playtest PDF!

Wandering Green 6/15/2026 by Ostrichmonkey Games on Patreon. Join Ostrichmonkey Games's community for exclusive content and updates.

I've also started work on converting my souls-like inspired (and unfinished) ttrpg to the Paragon System (as seen in Agon, and Deathmatch Island). Plus, my Marathon inspired forged in the dark game has been seeing regular updates!

Dark Confluence & Ex Materia by Ostrichmonkey Games on Patreon. Join Ostrichmonkey Games's community for exclusive content and updates.

And most recently, I started work on some sublcasses for use with Gila RPGs' fantasy ttrpg LORE. The Bulwark fighter subclass which wields a shield to protect allies, and the Magpie for rogues, somewhere between a thief and a packrat.

Gila RPG LORE Subclasses by Ostrichmonkey Games on Patreon. Join Ostrichmonkey Games's community for exclusive content and updates.

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #ttrpg design #ttrpgs

probablyfunrpgideas

Blades in the Dark Idea: your character’s vice is an obsession with some kind of ongoing media. Penny dreadfuls? A radio drama? Maybe a book series that’s close to its final volume? You spend hours re-reading and theorizing about what happened and where the story is going, trying to track down apocryphal editions that support your ideas. Overindulge in your vice, and you might get metaphorically trapped in a fantasy world, literally trapped in your conspiracy stringboard, or arrested while confronting the author in a tea shop.

I think there’s some good plot hooks and NPC connections here! Who can you meet among the literary fandom of Doskvol? Who’s your vice purveyor, who doesn’t just get you the latest issue of Sharkman vs Dr. Phantasm but convinces you to research the actual bite strength of a shark to see which of them would win?

goodluckpress

Jean, from the OCAD Drama Club, ran Craterboys on a beautiful spring day, using chalk and super big dice!

kickair8p

So I saw a photo of this hexagon tile floor . . .

The blurb said the shot was taken in Granada, Spain, by Agneta Fondén. No other info, so I have no idea how old, etc. There's a game (from 1988) that uses a similar pattern on one of its pieces, but this could predate it by at least a thousand years — or not. But the pattern intrigued me, so I made a texture map and used Blender's geometry nodes (no generative AI) to set up a hexagon grid with random rotations for the tiles:

That's all done with a single design:

You'd think this would have a name, right? (For its historical use as an architectural / decor tile — although I've found out more about its use in games, that's not what I'm looking for.) Like the Penroses do (and no, it's not one of those). But I've had no luck finding it, or any other info. Any (human only, please) help?

Crossposted to Pillowfort and Dreamwidth.

break-rpg

In today’s entry I’m happy to introduce the Henshin Hero, a calling based on a variety of transforming heroes you might see in anime and tok

ladytabletop

Necronautilus by @worldchampgameco

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Adam Vass is consistently playing with just how strange mechanics can get, and with so many mechanics at once. In this case, the use of actual words creates a fun little spelling puzzle game inside the greater game.

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