It's Dan Phipps

A Game Design Portfolio

[virozero]

I think there should be noise marine variants that are like ravers

Like look at this

Kandi marines

Cyber/Industrial goth marines

the possibilities are endless

[postdungeon]

Oh what a kill team this would be

[taraxippos]

Akira bike sliding on a horse

[taraxippos]

concept art

[postdungeon]

Loose game design thought: when you're playing a D&D and you roll to hit and you miss, it is boring.

Into the Odd solves this by removing the to hit roll in favor of letting the damage die do the talking.

Spencer Campbell of Gila RPGs (among many others, I'm sure) have been exploring totally diceless combat.

But what I'm interested in is solving the problem by making it much much worse: missing in combat is boring when it should be EXCRUCIATING.

Weapons where the default outcome of a miss is that you take a vulnerable token you can't clear until your next turn. Until then the next hit deals double damage.

Make it so bad that the boring outcome is a relief. Just dial that tension up to 11.

Anyways that's what I've been putting in the gem room games newsletters the past few months. I really think that's what I want in heroic fantasy RPGs - going outside the bounds of having players die all the time to explore new and exciting frontiers of unbearable tension.

[vedurnan-archive]

in the future calico critters and warhammer figurines will be sold in the same store and you can buy books that are like, here are ways to play with these toys together. for instance like the sweetpea bunny birthday party where the space marines are invited. so they have to pick out their best armor to wear. etc

[postdungeon]

To make this game... It is my dream

[drakeanddice]

I got a neat book today.

And now if you'll excuse me I'm going to sit on the floor with dry erase markers and blocks and dice and index cards and try some stuff.

[drakeanddice]

So, this book--as the word encyclopedia there in the title might imply-- is a fairly exhaustive catalogue of game mechanics. But it's also nicely subdivided into subsections like "turn order" or "scoring;" So I spent a productive couple of hours just arbitraily putting together goofy, nonsensical games by grabbing one example from each of the subsections and pondering their implications.

I've come to the conclusion that auctions are criminally underrepresented in the TTRPG scene. Also that my forthcoming sci-fi game is going to be like 10 minigames in a trench-coat.

Pick up this book at your own risk.

[luketaluketa]

Cataphract.

[universalhorrorblog]

[peliydoritos]

[wanderer-chronicles]

[ninja-weapons]

This gif is outrageous

[headlesssamurai]

 ■ The so-called “blood explosion” which punctuates the conclusion of Akira Kurosawa’s 1962 movie Sanjuro remains one of the most memorable and influential special effects in film history. Production designer Yoshiro Muraki would later recall this scene was filmed in a single take. No such effect had ever been attempted before, as movies of the time rarely showed violence with graphic detail. Filled with uncertainty, Muraki worried the blood spray he’d rigged up wouldn’t impress Kurosawa, so he added an extra 30 pounds of pressure to the fluid pump. At the moment the pump was activated, the additional pressure caused the compressor hose attached to actor Tatsuya Nakadai to blow a coupling which created a slight, unintentional delay before the fake blood began to spray, and caused a much larger gush of fluid than planned. It sprayed so powerfully Nakadai claimed it almost lifted him off the ground. His heart sinking, as he believed the delay and over-pressure had ruined the effect, Muraki nervously glanced at director Akira Kurosawa, but Kurosawa only nodded in approval.

[trilllizard666]

“oh god i fucked this up”

“yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOO”

[kineticpenguin]

And to think this is so iconic that “two dudes clash, there’s a beat, then one dies incredibly violently” is just a must-have for action in anime

[webbut]

Its crazy to think that this iconic visual that has been so ubiquitous in pop culture for so long despite that the source material barely being known by people all came from actors staying in character thru an FX malfunction.

[estrogenized-valerie]

Sanjuro and its predecessor, Yojimbo, are both available FOR FREE on The Internet Archive! They’re KICK ASS movies and you should watch them!! You have no reason not to!!!

If you like anime, if you like Westerns, if you like samurai or cowboy tropes at all, you should really really watch some of Akira Kurosawa’s films! Rashomon is also very good and has had a really profound impact on modern film and storytelling!!

[aaronsrpgs]

Aaron King Bootleg Fest

Preorder indie RPG zines that will have you playing games inspired by Fallout, RuneQuest, Dune, and more.

I'm doing preorders to fund a print run of game zines. Ancient world fantasy, postnuclear adventure, drug-fueled aristocratic space feudalism. Going to print at the end of May, shipping whenever I get them.

[aaronsrpgs]

A couple more weeks on this! I just wanted to mention that there are also RETAILER DISCOUNTS. Anyone who orders three or more copies of a single zine gets DOUBLE their entire order.

You can do this if you're a store, a distro, a reseller, or if you just want extra copies for the players at your table. No questions asked.

Also, if you want to hear me talk about copyright and IP "ownership," you can listen to the old RTFM episode on RuneQuest.

[cryptotheism]

Every piece of dogshit art makes the world a better place to live. Better to create poorly than not at all.

[postdungeon]

Happy Kentucky Derby day to Lancer pilots who need to name their mech

[aninventoryofthepossible]

Time to check in at the No-Tell Motel

My new single-player TTRPG, No-Tell Motel, is now available! Come on over and grab a PDF, or throw in $5 more to pre-order your physical copy.

In No-Tell Motel, you play the overnight clerk at a sleazy motel. One of your guests murders another one, and no one much seems to care who did it or why. No one but you, that is.

Playing the game only requires a standard deck of playing cards and a six-sided die. You use the face cards to identify your motel's regular guests (yes, the book comes ready with 16), and the numbers cards to randomly generate things that happen between them.

And unlike most build-as-you-go mystery games, you can make your best guess and still get it very, very wrong.

The nightly spread of the game looks a bit like a hand of Solitaire, and that's on purpose. I wanted playing the game to feel a little bit like something you'd do to pass the time in the small hours of the morning.

Here's how it works.

The rules generate different murder victims and methods, a highly randomized yet still coherent matrix of guest gossip, actions and conflict, and most importantly: a way to find out if your accusation was correct, and what the consequences are for pointing the finger.

If you like pulp crime, The Conversation, or Errol Morris's Tabloid, you should check out No-Tell Motel.

[indiepressrevolution]

Now at IPR: The Wreck of the Murderous

The viking cat crew of the longship Murderous has wrecked upon the shores of a black sanded beach. Before them lies a ruined city ruled by animal gangs, a defiled necropolis, and a ziggurat shrouded in mist. Only their close companion DEATH knows what they will face after… The Wreck of the Murderous!

An adventure written for the fast-paced, high-energy, dark animal fantasy role playing game 9 Lives to Valhalla, The Wreck of the Murderous explores the post-human Age of Beasts as a standalone tale or the start of a multi-session campaign of ruin. This adventure includes a setting filled with all the locations, NPCs, and villainous adversaries players need to catapult their felines into glorious exploits.

https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/The-Wreck-of-the-Murderous-Print-PDF.html

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played BLOOD FEUD ?

By Alf Peter Malmberg, Amos Johan Persson

Blood Feud is a game about toxic masculinity: certain common attitudes and behaviors among men, that cause great harm to them and to others around them. This is a game about people being nasty to each other and about figuring out why.

It’s also a game about vikings of pre-christian Scandinavia; about honor and blood feuds, courage and brutality, corruption and consequences. Above all it is a game about what it means to be a man in such a world—and what consequences that has on the communities they live in

Have you played ?

Yes I have played it

No but I've read it

No but I've heard of it

Never heard of it

Voting ended onApr 16, 2024

[monsterfactoryfanfic]

Last year, the RTFM podcast did a great episode on this game!

[postdungeon]

It was a tremendous honor to be invited to speak about this game and the strange performance of cis masculinity.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played VOID 1680 AM ?

By Ken Lowery

With a deck of cards, a six-sided die and a stack of music, you will build a 12 song playlist, invent and interact with Callers to your show, and evolve their stories in a single session or ongoing play. No matter their motivations, they simply must be heard. In that way, you are very alike.

Have you played ?

Yes I've played it

No but I've read it

No but I've heard of it

Never heard of it

Voting ended onApr 12, 2024

[postdungeon]

Not only did we play void but the creator broadcasted our playlist on a real am radio and also online

VOID 1680 AM // K-WAK_09.17.23

From the hurricane-ravaged plane of Calikota, Affiliate DJ Karva MacLoon broadcasts tunes of doom and beauty. Life may be like a hurricane i

[thydungeongal]

I'm DMing my first dnd campaign with a couple players who are very experienced with 5e. I've found that I really like making homebrew items and that my players get really excited when I give them toys to play with that they've never seen before. Do you know any ttrpgs with exciting items that I could draw inspiration from?

13th Age (a weird lil D&D-like with some fun twists on the formula) had some interesting magic items, as does Earthdawn (a medieval fantasy RPG that is actually related to Shadowrun), and of course Rolemaster, the best game, has an exhaustively detailed system of bonuses and modifiers to be applied on magic items, and the classic Creatures & Treasures books featured interesting unique magic items alongside ones generated with the magic item creation rules. Oh, and Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures too!

But this actually leads to a sort of a mini rant of mine, in that I still haven't found a fantasy RPG that does magic items to a degree where I find them satisfying. In a dungeon combat game like modern D&D +1 swords are the most useful mechanically, but they're really boring. In older editions +math swords are also useful and actually necessary after a certain point when lots of creatures start being immune to nonmagical weapons, but they're still boring! And the fact that D&D has always had lots of really neat magical items that do stuff beyond just +math to sword makes all those boring yet useful items even more disappointing.

Anyway all of this is to say that the world has grown past the need for +1 swords, instead we need more crab

[vixensdungeon]

This is sort of a more recent issue than you might think. In ye olde 1974 game, most of the magical non-sword weapons had something a bit special to them, mostly the ability to be thrown.

And even the humble +math sword? No way it's going to be boring, because that thing is intelligent.

[postdungeon]

I wrote about the plus one sword problem!

"There is no shortage of interesting, powerful, stand out magic swords, shields, rings, and helmets littering the various abandoned places in a given adventuresome setting. But what do we do with the plus one sword? Generic, boring, waiting to be replaced when a plus two sword comes along. Is it even magic, or just slightly better made?

But: there is magic in even the humble plus one sword. Not as a cutting implement, but as a vessel into which you can safely pour your excess lore, your half-baked worldbuilding, your foreshadowing and forgotten histories. No need to slow down your game with dry and dusty exposition when you can say it with a sword!"

Polishing a Plus One Sword

Finding the magic in the least magical of treasures