#ttrpg articles

[modoreadsttrpgs]

This article has been in my to-read list since it came out, so I could pay proper attention to it. Definitely the right call, what a brilliant piece of writing. I just got a fascinating piece of critical thinking about Realis, a stirring introduction to surrealism, and a kick up the arse to push myself creatively. All in one go!

[notetakers-blog-of-holding]

An article on how to design your own fantasy religion including important talking points and organizational issues.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Hasbro is super-excited for a digital D&D future. They're tired of selling us, as Penny Arcade perfectly describes, a single hamburger we can share with our friends every week for thirty years. Hasbro wants subscription revenue from every player every month – not just the single purchase of a book you can keep, share, and use for the rest of your life. Hasbro doesn't want to sell you D&D. They want you to pay rent. Chris Cocks, Hasbro's president and former president of Wizards of the Coast, is pushing hard for a digital future. He already said they're running experiments with artificial intelligence saying "D&D has 50 years of content that we can mine". The new head of Wizards of the Coast, the subsidiary of Hasbro in charge of D&D, is a former Blizzard executive who replaced a former Amazon and Microsoft executive. They posted a new D&D product architect job with a clear focus on digital gaming and a new "monetization designer" which is as close to "professional enshittifier" as I've heard of in a job description. So yeah, Hasbro is really excited to charge monthly fees and microtransactions for D&D and ensure you never stop paying for it. But I have good news for you. It doesn't matter.

[txttletale]

Another advantage of getting to know the narrator of your RPG is that it helps mitigate unconscious bias in your design. Dungeons & Dragons has a notably anthropological narrative voice, explaining other cultures and creatures like a scientist in the field. The language of D&D mimics the writing style of mid-century scientists traveling to “exotic” locations and cataloging non-Western experiences as part of a documentation of the Other. It’s easy for newer designers to want to “write a game like D&D” without regard for how even the narrative voice of Dungeons & Dragons carries unintended political baggage. Is a bird’s-eye and judgemental perspective really the energy you want to bring to your whimsical fantasy world? Or is there another perspective within your world that can be more useful, and allow you to find new perspectives on the world you’ve created.

—Jay Dragon, The Storyteller Technique

[mntacuyan]

when you're on Probation and you gotta go interview folks in prison...

Triangle Agency 🔺🔺🔺

[utilitycaster]

hm. in the process of doing some informal research re: Kollok I found this line on Polygon:

"One of the show’s gimmicks is that players who subscribe to the channel on Twitch can then make their own characters and are then allowed to embark on a freeform text-based role-play via Discord."

And I gotta ask but has anyone from the Polygon TTRPG/Actual Play writers every been on social media because I'm like, pretty sure any fan of any show can make up an OC and do text-based roleplay on a Discord server; it just might not be an official Discord server. I really do increasingly feel like Polygon capes so hard for Kollok and the heavily film-edited D20 seasons because they don't actually have a good grounding in basic actual play and fandom culture and are honestly a little embarrassed by it. Unfortunately this also means that they're like "Gadzooks! What are these Incredible New concepts like Text-based Roleplay and Longform Campaigns Of Undetermined Length!" and overall it gives off the vibe of a not terribly bright and profoundly stoned college sophomore trying to appear knowledgeable about music by acting like the guitar was invented in 1995 by Oasis.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Rascal News has posted the Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy press release!

If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!

Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[dilfsisko]

Yknow I’ve had my parents, my teachers, and my friends explain it to me, I’ve watched several videos and read about it. But I STILL don’t understand inflation or why we can’t print more money and I don’t think I ever will

[luckthebard]

Ok but seriously what is Polygon’s problem with CR.

[s-che]

"I was wrong, of course, and stupid, and I don’t think it’s worth taking too seriously the design takes I had in 2013, when my biggest concerns had mostly to do with watching Minecraft Let’s Plays and finishing the eighth grade, but my biases do point us toward something interesting: there is, I think, a tendency to look at games (but especially TTRPGs) as falling into one of two categories: games with a map and games without one. I want to argue that this binary is, at the very least, unhelpful."

"Two Visions of a Map," a new design article about how games ask us to think about the world underneath our feet, is out now for everybody.

[plethoraworldatlas]

A great article I read, about a Africa inspired setting for Pathfinder, but with lots of great application to all African inspired TTRPG settings and just good information and history in general

In the grand tradition of reading games as texts + inflammatory titles, this is a (hopefully concise!) discussion of some issues I have with the celebrated Pathfinder 2E supplement The Mwangi Expanse. For people who haven’t been keeping up with Paizo’s releases, TME is a revamp of Golarion's Notfrica (oldheads might recall the Expanse from Heart of the Jungle, Sargava: The Lost Colony, and the Serpent's Skull adventure path in the last gen) for PF2E; it's served as a launching pad for other stuff that's come out focusing on the Expanse, like the Strength of Thousands AP or The Slithering. There's a lot to love about TME and it improves on its predecessors in many ways. I got a hard copy as a gift for my birthday and the art is gorgeous, still makes me happy when I flip through it. The intro from Jabari Weathers has some rock-solid advice. It's not a bad product, y'know? Certainly laps anything comparable from Lizards of the Toast. I'd even say it's the best African-inspired setting book put out by a mainstream tabletop corp to date. That being said...I'm not sure I can call it a good setting book. Mean people say this shit all the time, but any criticism here is genuinely coming from a place of love. Like many of the people who worked on TME, I’m ferociously proud to be Black and I hope that pride in weird beautiful multifaceted Blackness comes out in the rest of the post; hope it comes out in this blog overall, really. I've tried to be especially careful in taking the theoretical underpinnings of TME's Black Atlanticism seriously, so I’m not just talking down from a mountain of reified Africanity. If anything, I strongly suggest (in concert with the inimitable Zedeck Siew, who was a huge help in sharpening my own thinking around this topic) that we should all be a little more sus of folks like me, especially when they claim sweeping knowledge of a motherland through diasporic identity or are living in the Global South but seem reluctant to talk about their own privileges within postcolonial systems. My type of African emigre (that blend of colonial-"traditional" and postcolonial elite who can marshal enough in the way of resources and/or connections to anchor themselves comfortably in the West) is certainly part of the problem. There's a whole cottage industry of freaks relying on the fact that the average Western reader-player is woefully ignorant of capitalist dynamics Back Home or Within the Diaspora to peddle their wares, so stay sharp. If anyone needed an African guy to tell them this for it to land - here you go.

[talesfromopenpages]

In recent years, tabletop roleplay games, or TTPRGs, seem to have been taken from the fringes of life to the mainstream. Games like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Vampires: the Masquerade and others have gone from extremely nerdy, bringing about an image of a group of social outcasts sitting around in someone’s basement on a weekend other kids’ are out at parties, to somewhat pretty cool, with people out and about in merchandise.

A lot of it can be attributed to groups like Critical Role — who livestream their games to a wide audience — and Dimension 20 — whose episodes are a little shorter than CR and thus easier to catch up on -, both of whom have cultivated quite the following.

But what is the appeal? I mean, it’s just a game, right?

Read the full story on Medium.

[liesonthefloordramatically]

look, if you are in my classes, here's my advice to you:

read the syllabus

read the assignment instructions

I'm begging you to read the assignment instructions and then follow them

definitely check the speaker notes on PPTs because you will get the most unhinged Easter eggs for literally no reason

[brandonseifert]

"The National Park Service, tasked with protecting America’s most important ecological treasures, like the Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, and several hundred linear feet of stainless steel-reinforced Mississippi River shoreline, has an even more unusual plot of land to maintain beginning in 2025. It’s a place that’s fairly dark, extremely moist, and entirely fictional, called Mystery Flesh Pit National Park. The viral art project, which blew up on Reddit during the COVID-19 pandemic-era lockdowns, is finally being turned into a tabletop role-playing game."

(via Cinch up your waders, the Mystery Flesh Pit RPG is finally open | Polygon)

[artifactsofplay]

Explorers Design - Mork Borg

Clayton Notestine does a deep dive into the layout design of Mork Borg.

[legionofmyth]

The Rifter #5 - Rifts: The Operator

Enhance your Rifts game with new Operator options! Check out our video overview of The Rifter #5 by Palladium Books, Inc. Discover fresh skills, advanced equipment, and unique character options for your campaigns. Watch now and take your Rifts adventures to the next level! #Rifts #TTRPG #TheRifter #PalladiumBooks #TabletopGaming

The Rifter #5 Rifts Ultimate Edition Elevate Your Rifts Game with New Operator Options! Step into the shoes of an Operator like never before with our in-depth overview of The Rifter #5 by Palladium Books. Discover fresh skills, cutting-edge equipment, and unique character options that will supercharge your Rifts campaigns. Don’t miss out on the advanced strategies and thrilling new content that…