#indie RPG

[damsels-n-dice]

i am wondering if u have any advice for people who want to make ttrpgs?

(started working on a newspaper club rpg with a friend a few years ago but i never finished it but i want to try again with that same idea)

hi! i've actually only been making TTRPGs for about 2 years myself, so i'm far from an expert, but i'll try to share some things i've learnt! hopefully some of it is useful to you, or at least gives you some ideas

(the post ended up quite long so it is going under a read more)

1: Consume other stories!

this applies to all sorts of media -- books, movies, tv shows, theatre, podcasts, actual play shows & board games as well as other TTRPGs.

you can get a lot of inspiration in terms of the kinds of characters, genres and stories you want your game to engage with through just consuming a lot of media, even if it isn't gaming related! i also quite like finding specific things i like in a show or a book, and then trying to figure out how i'd convert it to a tabletop medium.

board games are a bit less story-focused, of course, but have the added benefit of providing you with potential tabletop friendly mechanics. things that come to mind are dread using a jenga tower and a number of TTRPGs that take inspiration from card games like poker. you can play games for free on sites like boardgamearena, and there are solo options & tutorials available for many of those.

and of course, finally there are TTRPGs! i assume you already play multiplayer games in some capacity, but reading rulebooks and playing solo games can also both be very valuable. you can find what other people in your genre are doing, get ideas for mechanics and a whole bunch of other useful things. to find TTRPGs without breaking the bank, i'd suggest checking out the free physical games page on itch.io, and blogs like @theresattrpgforthat and @indie-ttrpg-of-the-week. you can also get a lot from charity bundles & game jams.

2: Don't be afraid of SRDs.

i don't know how much you know about RPGs or making them, so for the reference of anyone who doesn't know: SRDs are system reference documents, provided by game designers so that other creators can use their systems to create games & hacks of their own. these come with licenses that explain how you can use the game -- some are commercial and others won't be. as with games themelves, quality and clarity of SRDs can vary, and some have a lot of rules attached!

but basically, i cannot recommend researching SRDs enough. creating an entire system from scratch as a new TTRPG designer is incredibly daunting & can be a lot of work. particularly if you're writing for multiplayer games. finding an SRD that fits any mechanic or tone ideas you have gives you a basis to work on, which you can then alter or expand to fit your specific needs. most of my games use SRDs!

i've used the buddy system for multiplayer games before, as well as creating some hacks of lasers & feelings (not strictly an SRD but very simple and popular to adapt). off the top of my head, there's also: caltrop core, EMERGE8, honey heist, and the horseshoe system. many of these were taken from the one page rpg jam's resource list!

i'll also mention the second guess and wretched & alone single player SRDs, as i'm not sure if you're writing for single or multiplayer! but both of these lists are obviously just a starting point.

3: Start small and get something finished.

many of my first games are no longer available on itch.io, but you can see that the earlier ones on there are mostly one page, solo and/or lyric games. like with most creative stuff, just getting something done at all is often a big concern with TTRPGs! especially when my own longest project ('til it kills us) is 50 pages, and it's still far from the longest TTRPGs you'll be able to find out in the wild.

if you can make this project you'll be working on be short -- ideally between 1 and 10 pages or so, imo -- then do that.

if not, consider trying something else small out as you're also working on this big project. join a game jam like the eternal ttrpg jam or, when it comes around again, the 200 word RPGs jam that runs on tumblr. or hack one of the solo games i mention to do something silly with friends. it doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be published or even played, and you probably won't like it that much. but i find there's nothing that makes the big projects easier than finishing a small one to prove that you can write a TTRPG after all.

4: Follow cool people to keep learning!

i already mentioned a few great blogs to follow here on tumblr, but i learn a lot about game design from the blogs i follow on here and the channels i watch on youtube. i won't do too many recommendations as i don't want to spam people with notifications but here's a few.

tumblr: @psychhound, @anim-ttrpgs, @indierpgnewsletter, @indiepressrevolution, @crackerjackalopegames

youtube: Five Minutes, Not 5e & A.A. Voigt

discord: i'm a lurker in the TTRPG Collective & Chimera Hearts

i'm also gonna mention TheQueerXP actual play podcast, simply bc those guys are really awesome and deserve all the love & attention!

4: Have fun?

idk this one is cheesy but i write TTRPGs bc i do genuinely love every part of the design and gameplay process (except formatting 😭) so i just wanted to say that, like. if you enjoy making games and love what you're making please keep making and sharing them, because people will find them and love them. and don't feel bad if you don't enjoy it, and you find yourself wanting to take a break from your project, or even stop. it's a very different experience to playing or running TTRPGs! and the game will be better if you don't end up hating it.

Conclusion

i have no idea if any of this is helpful, as someone who got into TTRPG design through D&D 5e entirely by accident, and whose design philosophy can mostly be described as "hope and pray". but hopefully other people will be able to jump in and share their own thoughts or resources, and i'm happy to help with any more specific questions if you have them, anon! i'd love to hear more about your game :)

[eliotbaum]

Two postcard designs by Newt for The Hidden Isle: Forever Hold Your Peace. Only a couple hours left to snag these for free with the Early Bird special reward!

[anim-ttrpgs]

The more I think on it, and I know this greatly differs from what people have come to expect in recent years, but to me a TTRPG with no adventure modules is like booting up a video game and finding out the devs didn’t make any levels. Like I wanted to play this but I guess we’ll have to wait until someone in the group, who may have never played the game before, spends a not-insignificant amount of their free time in the level-editor throwing something together for us to play.

[horrorvale]

HorrorVale is a Spooky, Horror themed adventure available NOW! Join Alice the Skeleton Witch on her journey through undead towns, scary forests, dark swamps, and more as she hunts for her lost Dog!

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HorrorVale

Discord: https://discord.gg/KZpYZcd8Fm

Twitter: https://x.com/HorrorVale

[slotttralist]

⸻⸻⸻ ⟡ ABOUT ⟡ ⸻⸻⸻

Kandinhale is a story-driven short RPG game in which you'll have to escape from the clutches of Kandinhale, the company that owns almost the entire consumable market in this idyllic candy world.

⸻⸻⸻

PLAY IT FOR FREE ON STEAM!

PLAY IT FOR FREE ON ITCHIO!

[fort-of-novelty]

I'm bored of elemental giants. Use environmental giants instead.

Environmental Giants all start out the same, but their bodies take up the features of the place they live in. They become a reflection of their domain.

Giant takes up residence in the cliffs of dover? Not a stone giant. No, that's specifically The Giant of Dover. Its body is made of chalk. It can create dust clouds of chalk with its breath, its shoulders are padded with tufts of short grasses and blackberry bushes.

Giant takes up residence in the ruins of a highway during an apocalypse? That's the I-95 Giant. It has rebar spines along its back, skin of pavement and concrete, and wears wrecked cars as armor.

And to make this idea more dynamic, the giant's form changes as the ecosystem changes. A river gets diverted away from a Giant's domain? Then the Giant dries up along with its land. Now the Giant has an incentive to protect its dominion, and a weakness that its enemies can exploit.

[vivtanner]

The despotic fleet, one of the main adversaries of the Dioscorian agents 🔥 The Hidden Isle

[franciscolemos]

Cosmonaut in the dark.

[nullandvoidgames]

“What indie RPGs have you played recently?”

Me:

[herecomesthementalmeltdown]

one-page RPG idea: two-player game where one is trying to burn down the Gävle Goat and the other is the exhausted local government trying to stop them

[mxyzptplk]

superwholock logo but with indie rpgs (and earthbound)

[stonegearstudios]

On the Ruins of Giants

A small RPG about a big, decaying world

Art by @bedupolker / @bedupolker.bsky.social

Well, I went and got big art for a project I was only fiddling with so far, so I guess I need to make a proper post for it

Well, I went and got big art for a project I was only fiddling with so far, so I guess I need to make a proper post for it

Being small mice exploring the decaying ruins of the human world

Building up your colony so that it can survive

Traversing dangerously decayed and overgrown environments, as well as figuring out how to get your salvage back home

Dealing with all manner of mutants as well as seemingly unremarkable threats magnified by your stature

I have a lot of mechanic ideas that need testing (What dice to use, combat and positioning, character creation, exploration and more), and to do that I need to actually write them down outside of jot notes, so i guess I should get back to that

I have a few other posts about it (check the tags) but that's where I'll leave it for now. Little mutated lab mice in a big, hostile world. Coming whenever my ADHD lets me make progress on it. If you want to keep up, follow me here or on my bsky I basically never post unless it's about a project :V

One final thing, there's actually two versions of that pic, the original and one digitally tweaked, which do people like most?

[eliotbaum]

The Hunter / The Prowler / The Occultist / The Champion

4 character classes from The Hidden Isle.

Kickstarter ends in less than two weeks!

[anim-ttrpgs]

Reblog to Save a Life

I have talked about it before, but independant artists, and by extension independant TTRPG designers like myself and my team, live and die by their social media presence. We can't afford a lot of advertising, if any, and so we rely not only on word-of-mouth advertisement, but also just the good will of our audience. Like another designer @cavegirlpoems put it, we're basically busking, putting our art out for everyone and hoping for voluntary donations, donations which I writing this am reliant on as a disabled designer who can't work a normal job.

If you can't pay, you can still have it for free, and something that can be just as helpful is reblogging the posts of artists like myself. I'll demonstrate with a screenshot from our itch.io page for the open beta for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.

(and on these days, it was only about 6 or 7 people who did the reblogging.)

As you can see, reblogs mean more people see our game, which means more downloads (and sometimes even payments), downloads mean more people play our game and more people see our game in the itch.io algorithm, which means more views, which means more downloads, which means more and so on and so on. But, it all starts with you reblogging our posts, and without that, we're stagnate. It doesn't matter if you have 1,000 followers or 10, your reblog means that our posts reach corners of tumblr that wouldn't have seen it otherwise.

Myself and others are reliant on a 2-second reblog to be able to support ourselves as artists, you and your 10 followers are where it starts.

[brandonwritesgames]