My Hommage To The TV Series Supernatural "Carry On" Using 24XX Is Part Of This Fun Supernatural TTRPG

My hommage to the TV series Supernatural "Carry On" using 24XX is part of this fun Supernatural TTRPG bundle. There are 50 games here for 20 USD. It is the perfect time to get some games to peruse and prep at your leisure for Halloween! 👻

This is absolutely imperative. WotC and D&D still wins if they take up your mindspace and the words you put out into the world. The power of a single positive review or share into the hobby space by you playing other games and talking about them is unbelievable. You cannot fathom how much you can do for an indie designer by playing their game and talking about it online.

This is something I and other tabletop bloggers like thydungeongal have said repeatedly in the past, but I think it bears repeating.

If you don't like WotC due to the recent scandals they've been involved in (such as the OGL thing and sending the Pinkertons to someone's house) and you are serious about disrupting the economic and cultural stranglehold they have over the entire tabletop hobby, pirating D&D products is infinitely less important than exploring, discussing and platforming games and creators outside of the D&D 5e ecosystem.

A person who pirates every single D&D product but continues to exclusively play, discuss, talk, and blog about Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition is not doing as much as someone who religiously pays for every D&D product but also gives some of their precious time and attention to games that aren't D&D, especially if they have any sort of platform or audience.

A Sprinting Owl Manual For Making TTRPGs

So I wrote a guide to making TTRPGs.

It's taken me a couple of weeks, plus a lot of feedback from valiant community members, and it's been revised from about 20 pages to 67.

It covers theory mostly, but it has workbook sections and it gives a basic runthrough on the whole process from initial concept to feedback on the published release.

If this is something you think might be useful to you, or to someone you love who has been afflicted by rpg design, feel free to take a look.

(It's available for free, just hit the button under Community Copies.)

itch.io

A Sprinting Owl Manual For Making TTRPGs by kumada1

Procedure and theory for TTRPGs.

I made a little something. Trying to keep this idea up and around.

We really need to get better in telling those stories. And we really need to do away with the idea of Solarpunk just being these chill utopian fictions. A fight about getting to that Utopia can be Solarpunk to.

We also need to do away with the idea that there are no conflicts in an utopian setting. Because there are.

Hello fellow TTRPG enthusiasts. I am looking for fun and interesting examples for the layout of random tables. I have looked at some of the books I own, but find they are mostly just boring tables straight out of excel. How can we make them look good while still giving all the info and keeping them usable? Has anyone some cool examples?

It always makes my day when one of my games gets mentioned, and Wardens is one that solely exists because of the cover. When I saw that image I had to write the game. Besides, this sounds like a fun campaign concept!

The Monster Squad Campaign

I make a lot of game recommendations, but what kinds of games do I actually play? I figured I'd lead you through something that I did for the first half of this year that both I and my players got pretty stoked about. At the beginning of the year, I started a project that took a group of players on a tour through various monster-related tabletop roleplaying games, following a singular timeline, and I'd like to tell you about it! I'm also going to include the playkits I made for each game.

We kicked things off with Wardens, a 24XX hack about peasants with spirit companions who gave them the ability to protect their local village from supernatural threats. The main goal was to establish a bit of the setting, and introduce the idea of magic seeping into the world. The characters saved a dragon egg from the clutches of a greedy sorcerer, and received magical talismans that they could pass on to their children or spiritual heirs. (Playkit Here)

Our next game was Wolf Hounds, a PbtA game about the Benandanti, werewolves being hunted by the Inquisition. This took place in the same world, 200-300 years down the road. This was where one of the players decided to carry a wolf through-line throughout the entire campaign, while another player decided to highlight a masonic/magical through-line. By the end of this game, the characters had discovered that vampires had infiltrated the Church. (Playkit Here)

Our third game was Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants, a Forged in the Dark game. This was a slightly longer campaign, where much of the lore came in full force. We moved forward in the timeline to a point where vampires had taken over the entire isle, and players cobbled together characters blessed by the Fae - following the traditions of their peasant ancestors. We re-visited some locations that had changed over time - namely, a lake from Wardens and a monastery from Wolfhounds. We didn't play out the entire revolution, but watched the brigands gain ground, and made guesses as to what the final days of the Rebellion would look like. (Playkit Here)

Next up was Knights of the Road, a high-flying game of monster-hunters in the 1920's. This was a quick one-shot game, where the players had to figure out what was causing disappearances. It turned out to be a set of demons who had taken over the running of a train - and together they managed to resist the temptations of Hell in order to well, blow up the engine. It was quick trip of high-flying adventure before we took a big jump forward in time. (Playkit Here)

I proposed Urban Shadows 1e because I already had the book, and I really wanted to dig into some more traditional PbtA games. And boy did it deliver. The GM tools in this game showed me what kind of preparation I needed for an Urban Shadows game, and we hit the ground running. Our werewolf character had two previous incarnations revived as NPCs, and the whole crew got mixed up in a series of plots involving cabbalic rituals, werewolf hunters, a faerie lawyer and a poor girl stuck with fortune-telling abilities. The end was big and tragic and all of the characters left hints leading to Apocalypse Keys. (Playkit Here)

Gosh, Apocalypse Keys. Let me tell you, this is where the play group really shone. My players had bonded as a group and sank their teeth into character creation like it was a carcass and they were ravenous wolves. I wrote my own mystery about a summer camp that was housing teenage monsters. During the entire mystery, we were able to tie in pieces of the past games. Knights of the Road made an appearance as a rival faction, looking to do harm to monsters. Our Werewolf player (The Last) collected the echoes of their previous characters into a shared body and flirted with bringing the Fae back to their full power. Our Mason character (The Fallen) adopted a dragon and accidentally converted him into their worshipper. The Shade convinced The Found to sever a victim's lifeline so that she could bring them back untouched by the Harbinger. The Summoned called upon the Fae from our Brinkwood campaign to help them but ended up hardening their heart and pushing themselves closer to Ruin. And our newest addition, the Surge, wrestled with a Harbinger she had contained within herself, giving him more and more power over her in order to save her nephew. (Playkit Here)

The ending of the campaign was big and emotional. A number of characters made callbacks to previous games. One of our players chose Soft to be Strong by Marina as our ending track, and we had a chance to re-live our favourite moments before we brought the campaign to a close. Looking back, what would I have done differently about these games? I think I would have chosen something other than Knights of the Road, tbh. It didn't add much to the game experience as a whole - when it came to theme it was too distant from the rest of the games. There were other games that I had been thinking of adding to this lineup that I cut for various reasons, like Sunset Kills, Turn, Subway Runners and Adiotopia. I think Sunset Kills might have been the ideal switch-out for Knights of the Road. The monsters would remain sympathetic, rather than become simple opposition, and the players would probably learn the game pretty quickly, considering the number of other PbtA games on this list. The biggest drawback would be a pretty significant timeskip. However, adding the Knights into Apocalypse Keys definitely redeemed it a bit in my eyes.

I'm excited to do another run of thematically-tied games in the future, and when I do, I'll blog about it!