“Larper” being used like “poser” is so annoying bc actual LARPers are cool as hell. Get me some armour and a fake sword too
todays bird
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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
KIROKAZE
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@thesezombiestastelikeashes
“Larper” being used like “poser” is so annoying bc actual LARPers are cool as hell. Get me some armour and a fake sword too
A queer-focused TTRPG that employs art and dream elements to paint narratives about finding yourself and fighting your demons. Community, co
This is an incredible project that I'm lucky enough to be involved in, and if you you have a moment, please repost this and back it if you're able!
It's very difficult for small creators to get noticed, especially when we aren't backed by companies with advertising dollars to burn!
i DO believe that a good writer can make mischaracterization work. oh there's a character who doesn't normally cry? figure it out!! disect the character. make the situation cryable for them. make that character cry ugly tears even if it goes against their very nature. YOU CAN MAKE IT WORK!!!
A great piece of advice I've seen is "Don't fixate about what the character would never do. Think about the circumstances that would drive them to do this, even if they wouldn't normally."
Best advice ever!
OoC:
Okay. I need to make my own art for Clad. But I'm no artist, and I need motivation.
If this post gets 100 notes ill make (and post) my poor attempt of art of Clad.
(I can't believe im doing this. I can hear the roar of the Dragon's hoard already)
{ @styx-class-nhp sound the horn}
LANCERS
Assemble!
This is probably a point thats been made before but it bugs me when people act like the manticore is a suicide bomb mech because like. random guy in a cheap everest clone might not know about the angry water, or the fucked up horse, or why their mech is walking out of the airlock, but Everyone knows about the manticore. everyone knows that if you kill me, I'm taking you with me. Everyone knows 8d6 burst 2. and I'm standing right next to you. Which means you and your little friends have a Vested interest in keeping me alive. Castigate isn't a weapon, its a promise, and a suggestion that maybe you should shoot the saladin.
I actually made a point of this in my Manticore ransom note meme.
The Manticore has so much more tactical application than "walking bomb" but the discourse surrounding its one trait that almost never gets used in actual play is straight up impossible to cut through
Wait, so...Why DID 4E underperform? Or is that outside your expertise here? (No shame if so, you're a game designer, not a market analyst. You can tell by the having a soul).
(With reference to this post here.)
There were a couple of major factors in play there.
First, a big chunk of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition's popularity had come about due to robust third-party support, published under the auspices of Open Game License (OGL). Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, however, was not licensed under the OGL, being subject to a much more restrictive license imaginatively titled the Game System License, or GSL. Hasbro reportedly refused to negotiate with existing third-party publishers to get them on board with the GSL, or to offer transition support of any kind; instead, they simply demanded an immediate halt to the publication of all 3E material, and attempted to bludgeon publishers into compliance by threatening to yank their trademark authorisations (i.e., the agreements which allowed them to put the "D&D compatible" logo on the covers of their books).
Predictably, this approach was not well received. The largest of 3E's third-party supporters, Paizo Publishing (now Paizo Inc.), elected to produce their own game which was statblock-compatible with 3E in order to provide a venue for other publishers to continue producing OGL material; many of their peers decided to gamble on Paizo's plan rather than play ball with Hasbro, and this is how we got Pathfinder. Hasbro's behaviour thus caused D&D's third-party support to crater nearly to zero with the publication of 4E and created D&D's largest competitor.
Second, 4E was badly behind the curve on digital availability. Shortly before 4E was scheduled to drop, the digital masters (i.e., the files provided to printers in order to manufacture the books) were leaked on file sharing networks. Hasbro responded by panicking and ordering an immediate and indefinite halt to e-book publication of D&D material (in spite of the fact that the leak had demonstrably originated from their print production arm rather than their e-publishing arm), even going so far as to refuse to honour pre-orders for 4E's now cancelled e-book version.
Combined with a series of mismanagement-induced delays which caused 4E's virtual tabletop tools to miss the game's publication date entirely, and a decision to paywall what few first-party resources did manage to hit their target behind a monthly subscription, this resulted in 4E being available exclusively in print for the first two full years of its lifespan, at a time when D&D's competitors – including the aforementioned Pathfinder – were literally giving their core rules away in digital form for free.
As you say, I'm no market analyst, but I have a strong suspicion that "alienating practically all third-party publishers for a game line which was critically dependent on robust third-party support", "being the first edition of the game ever to face significant direct competition", and "making a game which dropped in the middle of the worst economic recession in thirty years available exclusively as an expensive printed set" resulted in the 4E stepping up to the plate with three strikes already against it. Add to that the almost comical ineptitude of Hasbro's advertising for 4E, and the usual drama of any major edition turnover, and... well.
"But what about the rules" sure, there were some issues with 4E's mechanics, but you need to understand that "4E underperformed because people hated the rules" isn't just a convenient narrative for edition-warring grognards; it's also a fiction which Hasbro itself has tacitly embraced, because the alternative is acknowledging that their publishing department repeatedly shit the bed on 4E's rollout.
Oh by the way my bestie dropped his Lancer album on Bandcamp.
https://jstrhouse.bandcamp.com/album/anvil
Go buy it and stuff.
I've had a couple of people ask for a digestible version of the whole "the real problem with Dungeons & Dragons is false advertising, not anything that's present in its text" thing I keep alluding to, so here's the bullet point version of that argument:
Dungeons & Dragons is owned by Hasbro. Yes, the same Hasbro that owns Monopoly and My Little Pony.
Hasbro wants D&D to be the only tabletop RPG that anyone plays.
In order to accomplish this, Hasbro needs D&D to be a universal entry-level game.
D&D is not a universal entry-level game.
All game rules are opinionated about how the game ought to be played, and as tabletop RPGs go, D&D's rules are more opinionated than most. This is not a flaw, but it's not what Hasbro needs.
D&D is also on the high end of complexity as far as tabletop RPGs go, and it's complex in a way that strongly rewards system mastery, so it's pretty far from "entry level".
Hasbro could produce a version of D&D that's at the very least less opinionated and more entry-level than it presently is, but they don't want to, because they've determined that certain rules features which run counter to both of those goals are critical to D&D's brand identity.
They also don't want to produce multiple versions of D&D tailored for different audiences, because they want every single D&D group to be a potential purchaser of every single D&D product; they'd be effectively competing with themselves for their own customer base if the published game was actually modular in any meaningful way.
So how does Hasbro square that circle?
Simple: they lie. They insist that D&D is in fact a universal entry-level game in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and back their advertising up with sponsored thinkpieces and podcasts and such to "prove" it.
Further, they've spent decades fostering a culture of play which conceals the gap between the game they're advertising and the game they're selling by ascribing any appearance that D&D isn't a universal entry-level game to the incompetence or malice of individual GMs.
The game the rules want to produce disagrees with the game the group wants to play? Nonsense – even the rankest beginner should be able to produce any experience of play using any set of rules, and if your GM can't, they're a Bad GM.
The game is hard to learn? No, it isn't – your GM is merely gatekeeping you. This wouldn't be a problem with a Good GM.
The upshot is that the published rules are more or less irrelevant with respect to achieving the desired experience of play, because they're operating within a culture of play which dumps 100% of the work of making that desired experience of play happen on the GM.
Indeed, much of what modern D&D presents as GMing best practices are really methods of working around the fact that the rules you're using disagree with you about what kind of game you're playing.
(It's not a coincidence that D&D's entrenched culture of play also insists that it's normal for GMs to be miserably overworked and treats GM burnout as a big funny joke, then turns around and loudly wonders why there's a constant GM shortage.)
The trick is, because you're still at least notionally using the rules of D&D, the fruits of all that GM labour are perceived as the product of "playing D&D", not of the GM's hard work.
In essence, Hasbro's business model for Dungeons & Dragons is selling you your own GM's labour with a D&D sticker on it.
It's a very neat trick, if you can pull it off.
Now, at this point some readers may be asking: well, sure, but not all GMs are doormats. What about "killer" GMs who do gatekeep and railroad their players and otherwise act like complete tyrants? I hear horror stories about them all the time.
That's the second trick: these are not opposites. The GM as human Xbox and the GM as tyrant of the table both represent the GM doing all the actual work of making the game happen. The latter isn't the outcome that Hasbro wants, but it's a logical conclusion of the position the want the GM to be in.
I'M DOING MY PART!
Thank you for willing to support our project!
hey just wanted to send you an ask to say thank you for your hard work!! i’ve learned about so so many new games i wanna play with my friends :) highlight of my day seeing your posts. thank you so much boss, i appreciate your dedication!!
Thank you for these words
Yes! My wishlist grows longer daily and sometimes! I get money to buy these games so I can read them!
never do any sort of collaborative storytelling with your friends youll get addicted for life
having brain rot about your own TTRPG character is so embarrassing. yes i love her and i think about her all day and i’ll take any excuse to talk about her. no, there’s no book or anything for you to read. she’s my emotional support rogue. she’s my fidget toy. i wish you could meet her. i made her up inside my head.
dnd setting where dungeons are as ubiquitous as roman ruins are in parts of europe
"i was just trying to dig a pond in my yard when i hit some kinda puzzle door, now i gotta get the adventurers guild involved. they say its gonna take at least 3 months to explore the whole thing, can u believe that?"
You should support this bundle if you like TTRPGs and hate lCE
No ICE in Minnesota: 1439 items for $10.00
SO MANY great games in here! Highlighting a few I mentioned over on bluesky:
Shepherds: hopeful fantasy, do-gooders changing the world for the better.
Hex & The City: the chosen one has vanished! Save the day without her.
Bloodstone: bloodborne inspired one-shots, forged in the dark.
Undying Corruption is Korea-inspired D&D 5E, written by Koreans.
There is a Goblin on the Loose in Icarus Station is a famously funny Mothership module.
Body Swap by the Big Top is a MotW mystery at a funfair.
Cryptid Creeks: save your town in this carved from Brindlewood game about a troop of young River Scouts!
Rosewood Abbey: solve monastic mysteries! A carved from Brindlewood game inspired by The Name of the Rose.
Tangled Blessings is a dark academia, solo/duet journaling rpg.
Midnight Muscadines has you making jams to preserve magic!
For Belonging Outside Belonging fans, there’s anti-fascist space adventure in the form of Rebel Scum! The game that was famously banned from DriveThru rpg for mentioning punching Republicans.
The Thunder Perfect Mind is about undead dealing with the toxic nostalgia for their pasts.
Songbirds is body horror osr that uses just a d10 and d20
Lordsworn is a GMless game of soldiers struggling to survive in the wake of their God’s death
Bump in the Dark is a game of monster hunting shenanigans.
EUREKA is an urban fantasy, mystery solving rpg. Character features work to help you find clues!
Trans Vampire Cowboys is all right there in the title!
Exceptionals is a game about super powered individuals as marginalised members of society.
OOC: Was chatting with the players I'm gonna be running Wallflower for, and the Genghis came up
Needless to say, I felt inspired, particularly by @revvedandrunning (sorry for the notif lol, i like your stuff)