#ttrpg playtesting

[adepticarus]

Playtest Fest!

You love making ttrpg characters?

Adept Icarus is holding our first ever "Playtest Fest" next Wednesday, where we'll walk folks through character creation for Obelisk: Realms In Peril (it uses tarot cards in a really cool and thematic way to make characters).

Sign up here:

[wolf-ttrpg]

Playtester Applications Open!

Want to help a new TTRPG dev playtest a game? Now you can! Applications for the first round of Living “Sucks” playtests are open now!

[eliotbaum]

The Siphoner 🩸 A character class for The Hidden Isle. You can preorder the TTRPG here

[eidolonplaytest]

art by @boocanan

After years of thorough playtesting, you too can now play the complete and beautifully illustrated game of EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self!

EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self is a tabletop RPG for 2-6 players. Look deep inside yourself to find the power lying dormant within, nourish that power through the bonds you build with others, and use the reality-bending abilities it grants you to fight for your ideals, fighting against the pull of the Undertow, the psychic tides that dictate the collective unconscious!

art by @skarchomp

Challenge Fate

EIDOLON uses our own Drawn From the Undertow game system, which replaces dice with a deck of tarot cards. Each action requires a draw, and each card dictates a new direction for the story to go. Play The Magician, and "you achieve an impossible success," but play The Tower, and "something terrible happens." Each character also chooses their own Resonant and Dissonant cards, which act as their own personal critical successes and failures!

art by L.L. Simkowiak

Drama-Driven Battle System

The combat system from 1E has been significantly reworked, while remaining the same core of the Crash system, in which battle is governed by dramatic arcs instead of hard numbers and stats. Short-term victories make enemies more powerful, more deadly, and more desperate, pushing them to further and further extremes until the players reach a moment of climactic triumph!... or, they suffer enough failures, incur enough physical, psychic and metaphysical damage, that they are forced to Face Death, and must cut a deal with the forces of The Undertow to go on fighting.

art by Julie Low

Actually, I Meant for You to Kick My Ass!

With the Reveal Your Master Plan Move, you can dramatically change the flow of a session by revealing a secret strategy that your character's been employing the entire time! Take a bullet? Reveal Your Master Plan to open your shirt and show off the body armor you've been wearing all along! Find yourself alone at the mercy of a powerful villain? Reveal Your Master Plan to declare that you called for back-up before the fight even started! Of course, nothing's ever a guarantee, and you'll often find that your "master plan" has a few hitches you'll need to resolve before it comes to fruition!

EIDOLON was developed in conjunction with the award-winning Eidolon Playtest podcast. Check it out if you want an example of the game in action!

[yerfriendmolly]

EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self 2nd Edition is available now!

EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self is a tabletop RPG for 2-6 players. Look deep inside yourself to find the power lying dormant within, nourish that power through the bonds you build with others, and use the reality-bending abilities it grants you to fight for your ideals, fighting against the pull of the Undertow, the psychic tides that dictate the collective unconscious!

EIDOLON uses our own Drawn From the Undertow game system, which replaces dice with a deck of tarot cards. Each action requires a draw, and each card dictates a new direction for the story to go. Play The Magician, and "you achieve an impossible success," but play The Tower, and "something terrible happens." Each character also chooses their own Resonant and Dissonant cards, which act as their own personal critical successes and failures!

---

My friend Luke and I have been working on this game for the last three and a half years and we are now ready to let you all get your hands on it! If you enjoy story driven tabletop role playing and/or Jojo's Bizarre Adventure or the Persona series, you should check out EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self.

[levilagoon]

Got something that'll be ready for playtesting real soon! Excited to share!

[siege-thewitch]

The APO:LL-OS is a google sheets project which seeks to make running the game 'Eidolon: Become Your Best Self' (2e) as easy as possible! It's got capabilities for keeping track of your tarot deck between sessions, the Phantom clock, and even the party's stats on hand for quick reference. The only thing it doesn't have is a soundtrack. Haven't found out a way to implement that in a spreadsheet. Yet. If you want this for your very own Eidolon campaign, this tool is free! Follow the link and copy the spreadsheet for yourself.

[tdoth]

W A K E U P O M E N

This place used to be Houston, now it’s something else, something dying. Titans, lords of industry and everything else left are the ones keeping it in a half-life. There’s a rot that runs so deep there’s no saving it anymore, not as it is. There’s salvation and devastation down this path, but you already knew that, Omen. Free the Hue, free yourselves, and free the future - the Titans must fall.

Titanomachy: DREAMS OF THE HUE / Demo Edition is now live, a fully playable version of the full release entering Kickstarter in late Spring of 2025. It contains the full rules, 19 classes, an example Titan and plenty 00's sensibility but-make-it-nightmare art from the incredible Jonatan Anjos and Minerva McJanda.

Built on The Wildsea's mechanical engine, TDotH is a fast and furious queer blitz of a tabletop roleplaying game, shrouded with furious revolutionary anger but cored through with hope for a better future.

Fans of Cyberpunk 2077, Spire, NorCo, Jeff VanderMeer, Neil Stephenson, Metropolis, and the work of Tom Bloom (Kill Six Billion Demons) and Wildbow (Worm, Twig, Pact) will find parallels in the broken world we've built for you to tell incredible stories in.

We hope you join us Omen, there's work to be done.

DOWNLOAD HERE

[theresattrpgforthat]

Protect the Child: Playtest Server

Hey! The day's finally here! I'm opening up a playtest server for my game Protect the Child, a Forged-in-the-Dark romp of monster babysitters.

If you...

want a chance to play a TTRPG for the first time

want to learn how to play Forged-in-the-Dark games

love found-family stories

want to watch game design happen pre-release

think I (Mint) have good taste in games

...you might be interested! This will be my home base for running various sessions across a variety of genres, with the common through-line of monsters taking care of a human child.

This will include quick-start games with pre-generated characters, as well as character creation sessions for teaching people how to make their own monsters (and their own supernatural kids)! All games are expected to include a basic kit of safety tools.

Protect the Child is thematically inspired by media such as:

Ice Age,

Monsters Inc.,

The Mandalorian,

Tokyo Godfathers,

Lion King 1+1/2, etc.

It is mechanically inspired by games such as:

Brinkwood: Blood of Tyrants,

Moth-Light,

Apocalypse Keys,

Last Fleet,

Antiquarian Adventures, etc.

If you are interested, hop in today!

[velvetthedragon]

This is Morgan, she's a luck spirit that comes from the Undertow for our Wildcard in the Eidolon: Become Your Best Self game I'm running. I made her as a targeted attack on my players lol

Also before anyone says MILF yes she is a single mom actually

btw you should give me munz

patreon.com/velvetdragon

paypal.me/dragongirljo...

[transplanarrpg]

🌟 Transplanar is turning FIVE! 🌟

We're celebrating our FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY this June, and we have a full schedule ready to share! This thread contains the details of all the incredible events we'll be hosting to celebrate HALF A DECADE of Transplanar RPG in just a few short days.

Each week, we’ll spotlight one of our four main shows with a series of prompts, streams, and special features. In order of release, we have:

🌟 The Second Stranger (June 2 - 7)

🗡️ GODKILLER: First Blood (June 9 - 14)

❌ The Chaos Protocol (June 16 - 21)

🩸 GODKILLER: Last Hope (June 23 - 28)

Every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, we’ll also share THEMED PROMPTS with an open invitation to make fanworks, games, or even Actual Plays based on our prompts!

At the end of the month, we'll compile all submitted works into a TRANSPLANAR ANNIVERSARY ZINE to print and/or release digitally.

Each week, we'll also be raising funds for a different charity supporting aid, justice, and liberation. We'll be fundraising for Care for Gaza, RAICES Texas, Dee Dee's House (Trans Women of Color Collective) and more! Your support means the world as we continue to fight for worlds beyond fiction.

There's a lot going on in this thread, so if you need help remembering, feel free to join our Discord (linked at the bottom of transplanarrpg.com) for access to reminder pings and event notifications! Or keep an eye on our socials. 😉

Without further ado, read on for the FULL schedule! 🧵

🌟 RERUN: Stranger Premiere Director's Cut

To kick off our event, we return to the place it all started... Fireroot Farm! Join the cast of The Second Stranger as we rewatch the premiere episode of Arc 1 and make commentary live on stream!

The stars disappear (again) Wednesday, June 4th at 8PM ET.

🌟 ONESHOT: Hounds of Mercy Reunion

The stars have returned and Andake is safe at last... but Mercy is missing... again. Can the Hounds put their torrid affairs aside to help their (kind of shitty) boss one last time?

AWOOOO with us as we return to The Mess™️ on Saturday, June 7th at 8pm ET.

🗡️ RERUN: First Blood Listening Party

Join Connie and Sea as they return to the world of the Cradle and revisit the heretics, speakers, and gods that made the GODKILLER: First Blood premiere so spectacularly devastating.

Iron-42 awaits on Wednesday, June 11th at 8PM ET.

🗡️ COMMUNITY NIGHT: Trivia

Do you know way too much lore about the Transplanarverse? Can you recite Connie's opening monologues? Did you guess the Second Stranger Arc 4 twist before the players?

Test your knowledge with a special TRIVIA NIGHT with the cast on Saturday, June 14th at 8PM ET.

❌ RERUN: Chaos Premiere Director's Cut

Join the cast of The Chaos Protocol as we rewatch the premiere episode of Arc 1 and make commentary on the absolutely sick foreshadowing that happens in that first stream.

The Chosen One welcomes you to join the Journey™️ on Wednesday, June 18th at 8PM ET.

❌ ONESHOT: Juneteenth Special

Welcome the one and only Samm Star as the LEAD SHOWRUNNER for a spectacular one-shot celebrating Juneteenth with an all Black, all trans cast. Did someone say... demigods?

Join us for a very special celebration on Saturday, June 21st at 8PM ET.

🩸 RERUN: Last Hope Marathon

It's our last week of programming! Get ready for a bloody, merciless marathon as we tackle two episodes of GODKILLER: Last Hope per night on Monday (6/23), Tuesday (6/24), Thursday (6/26), and Friday (6/27).

All streams begin at 8pm ET.

We'll see you in Yaolan.

🩸 PLAYTEST: Godkiller Worldbuilding

Join the cast for a very special playtest preview of BRAND NEW MECHANICS featured in the upcoming full release of the Godkiller RPG System.

We'll build our own version of the Cradle – and the Godkillers that reside within it – on Saturday, June 28th at 8pm ET.

Thus concludes the schedule for our Anniversary Streamathon! We can’t wait to celebrate HALF A DECADE (‼️) of our all-transgender, POC-led Actual Play series with the world.

Thank you so much to everyone who's supported and enjoyed our stories over the years. We can't wait to celebrate this June!

[adepticarus]

The time has come. To test Rue From Ruin. We need YOUR help. To finish the game!

Did you ever wish you could be the first to play a lonely solo werewolf game, provide valuable feedback, and be a crucial part of our development process? OF COURSE YOU DID!

Because reasons!

• Be among the first to experience Rue From Ruin.

• Provide feedback that will shape the final version of the game.

• Join a passionate community of fellow gamers and playtesters.

• Enjoy exclusive content and updates as a valued playtester.

How to Apply: simply click the link in my bio. We can't wait to hear your thoughts and see how you tackle the challenges of Rue From Ruin.

[sahonithereadwolf]

"Protect the Sacred's first complete playtest is here! Protect the Sacred is a anticolonial pulp adventure game that looks to emulate the mood and tone of the pulp movement beyond just as the globe-trekking adventure of stories like Indiana Jones, Johnny Quest, and Tomb Raider, but also pulp as horror, mystery, sci-fi, drama, and even romance.

In Protect The Sacred you work as a member of The Memento Group, an organization that, nominally, is an international nonprofit who is mostly interested in historical preservation, cultural outreach, and the building and support of museums and landmarks. As well as deconstructing and interrogating the colonial legacies of various academias and how they continue into today.

In truth, while they do that work and more, they are also a community-facing resource of specialists who look to protect, preserve, and reclaim a world of magic, monsters, and mystical artifacts on behalf of who they belong to and on that community's terms. Because for the Players of Protect The Sacred, all the intangibles of culture are all so very tangible.

Play as adventurers armed with folkloric magic power, deeply rooted in their connections to the culture around them. From wielding a legendary magical item, to practicing a cultrual magic, to taking the form of the fiercest monsters from your people's stories.

Explore the mythic realms talked about in the legends of heroes and gods as part of the Grand Outside, a magical otherworld in a mutually affecting relationship with the material. Explore a secret wizards nightmarket for clues and rumors on a trail for a stolen remains. Brave impossible and strange dungeons formed by stories that need to be told and stare truth straight in the eyes. Plan a heist to steal back the pilfered and stolen.

In this game I look to ask people to consider themselves, their relationship to culture, and what it looks like. I want you to consider and think on the meaning and value of the stories, lessons, and skills we pass on to others. I want to ask how we could challenge the ways we build and engage with history and these stories. This is a game where you fist fight fascism in many forms. It's a game about telling stories and building heroes. Are you ready to Protect the Sacred?" --- Information about joining the playtest can be found in the link! I'm excited to show y'all what I've been working on for about 2 and a half years.

[temporalhiccup]

In an effort to ease out of burn out and try to feel real and human again I'm digging around old games and seeing what would be fun to tinker with. For most of my games they get to at least an Alpha Build/Playtestable stage, but Never Break The Chain is one of the few that didn't quite manage to get that far (though it honestly wouldn't take that much more I think!)

Never Break The Chain mechanically and emotionally is a response to The Eventide Club, which was @jdragsky's response to Apocalypse Keys.

It's clear that this game is partly a love letter to jay dragon's design and how it makes me feel, and I wrote this during a time when I was insecure about my design. I was reeling from the idea that my games were too emotional to be enjoyable, that strangers were never going to like the games I create. (Typical Capricorn, even the way I work through my shit has to be productive in some way)

Every player character is made up of two components: a Musician Playbook and a God Playbook. It's my take on the very popular idea of fallen gods feeding off divine worship as musicians. I wanted to create a really fun and emotionally intense game (inspired by how famously messy Fleetwood Mac and other bands can be, definitely The Wicked + The Divine too).

It's been three years since I took a look at this stuff and it's fun remembering the mechanical shenanigans I was up to: tightening chains, breaking them, creating halos, shattering them, etc. I'll tinker a bit with these mechanics and see what comes of it.

The more complex of the playbooks are the Musician ones. What remains of the divine is raw and simple, ever fading and barely there. In comparison, the Musician playbooks are a chance for me to explore some truly messy human stuff.

Here's the Musician playbook, The Mask, it's mostly intact from the last time I touched it years ago. I just tightened a few options here and there.

I'll spell out the inspiration for this playbook: David Bowie, specifically the maddened Bowie interviewed by Cameron Crowe in 1975.

Bowie was famous for his different personas, and you can see some of them represented in the masks below: Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, Halloween Jack, the Goblin King, and the Minotaur.

This playbook is an exploration of what it could have been like for Bowie exploring these different personas, based on various events written about or talked about in later years, offering points of tension and intensity (deconstructed and awaiting creative input, like always) and hopefully creating explosive moments of playable drama.

I do think this playbook leans most into Bowie's contentious phase as the Thin White Duke. This was a man who was clearly breaking apart on stage, underneath the thinnest veneer of a persona that was holding itself together with a white-knuckled grip. Other personas were haunting him, discarded or never worn. Station to Station is my favorite Bowie album on most days, and his live performances of its music are almost painful to watch (while impossible to look away from).

I think, if we ever get this to playtest, I'll probably leave this playbook mostly as is (barring some mechanical tweaks that will be applied to all playbooks maybe) and just see where things go.

The Mask

You understand better than anyone that music is a story, and that performance is a mask well worn. You have created several Masks and stories over the years, and the Masks have recreated you. But as you seek fame and fortune, will the Mask become more real than you ever could be? One day you'll wake up and there won't be anything of you left, just a blank face both empty and signifying nothing.

Your Name

(Choose 1): A completely made up name that is never questioned, an appropriately dramatic name, a single initial that no one pronounces properly, I change my name every few months, a series of letters and numbers that only makes sense to my fans, a name that is as enigmatic as it is beautiful.

Your Look

(Choose 3-4): A painfully sharp and pale business suit with splatters of paint and blood on it, shades that almost no one has ever seen me take off, hair dyed into every imaginable color, the cruelest smile, the kindest eyes, an intoxicating scent, small and delicate tattoos that tell all my secrets, the body language of a predator, an unexpected scar, something else that betrays my mortality and weakness.

Your Role in the Band:

(Choose 1-3): Lead vocalist, lead guitar, muse, song writer, fuck buddy, everybody's ex, the face of the band, I'm here to look pretty baby

Choose the Mask you currently wear, one Mask you discarded, and one Mask that threatens to consume you.

I am an alien from a dying planet and harbinger of an inescapable apocalypse, my music is wild and haunting

I am royalty from a fictional past and deride the love I desperately need, my music is rhythmic and romantic

I am a rebel leader from a dark future and I shall orchestrate a dystopia of our own making, my music is hypnotic and delirious

I am the fae king who grants ill-cast wishes and offers dark bargains, my music is ethereal and manipulative

I am a serial killer who turns willing victims into impossible art pieces, my music is violent and eerie

I am a fallen angel, on the run from divine hunters and mortal lovers and only you can save me, my music is soft and beautiful

I am a broken doll mimicking life, perfect and made to fulfill your every desire, my music is naive and inviting

I am a warrior from another time and place, only you can heal my wounds and recreate my fate, my music is loud and lustful

As The Mask I gain 2-4 tokens when I:

Hide my true feelings behind a Mask

Ask someone to wear one of my Masks, for now

Give a part of myself to a Mask

When you gain your fifth token:

The divine music swells within you and seeks release. You cannot gain new tokens until you choose one:

Go to another band member and take off your Mask, reveal something vulnerable and raw about yourself. If they reach out to touch your real face, they break a chain. If they do anything else, break one of your chains.

Reflect on the god you once where, and create a new Mask to contain that memory. Your power wanes, crack one halo.

The Mask's Chains:

A whisper that comes from my mouth but doesn't sound like me at all

An embrace that promises more than it should

A kiss that comes dangerously close to unmasking me

One of my Masks on someone else's face

A song I wrote that will weaken a single Mask

A Mask I created that takes a life of its own

A Mask someone else creates to imprison me

Someone I love wearing my true face

The Mask's Move:

When you put on one of your Masks to tell its story, describe how you embody it and how you draw others into your spell. Spend tokens and roll.

On an 8-10 You are in control of the Mask, choose one:

A part of your Mask becomes more real than real, create a new Chain that reflects this.

A part of your true self gives way to the Mask, one Halo becomes whole again.

Someone is inexplicably drawn to you, you have them wrapped around your finger, for now. Say who they are and place a chain on them. If they're a band member, they place a chain on you as well.

On an 11+ The Mask begins to consume you, and you cannot tell the difference between art and reality. Choose one:

Another band member must become a part of your story, both of you place a chain on the other. For now, you are obsessed with crafting a Mask for them to match your own.

One of your fans is convinced the Mask is your true self, you cannot outrun them. For the rest of the scene you are at your fan's mercy. Describe how their obsession for you draws out something painful and real from you. When you return in a future scene gain the chain: an obsessed and dangerous fan

On a 7- your sense of self shatters and the Mask bleeds through. Until you regain your sense of self and remember you are not your Mask, you cannot perform. The Audience will tell you what happens next.

At the start of every session:

Spend a moment with your Masks and consider who they are and what story they have to tell. Choose one:

Put down the Mask you're currently wearing and pick up another, why does this one call out to you?

Change something essential about one of your Masks, what part of you refuses to bend or break?

Create a new Mask, based on someone you're obsessed with and yearn for. What does it feel like when you pretend to be them?

[eidolonplaytest]

art by @veldrin

The Grifter

Range: Earshot Stats: 1 POW 2 ELE 1 GEN 3 GLAM 2 BIZ

“My Eidolon allows me to talk to ________, and my natural charm lets me convince it to do whatever I want.”

The Grifter is one of the nine new playbooks introduced in EIDOLON: Become Your Worst Self, the upcoming expansion to EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self! 

What is EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self?

EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self is a tabletop RPG for 2-6 players. Look deep inside yourself to find the power lying dormant within, nourish that power through the bonds you build with others, and use the reality-bending abilities it grants you to fight for your ideals, fighting against the pull of the Undertow, the psychic tides that dictate the collective unconscious!

$5 Patreon subscribers get access to:

Playable drafts of Worst Self

Complete unillustrated version of Best Self

Monthly Design Session podcasts where Luke and Molly design the game in response to both the official playtest and to YOUR emails detailing your experiences playing the game!

[yerfriendmolly]

Eidolon VGM #0: Character Creation

WELCOME TO EIDOLON PLAYTEST SEASON 4!

The cast of Eidolon VGM—Molly, Lexi, Fabby, Mike, and Maxie—sit down with Luke to build their characters and establish some baseline worldbuilding about LUNA-1, the first city on the moon! Kinda seems like it sucks up there tbh!

For the next year, we'll be designing and playtesting our expansion to Eidolon 2e: Eidolon: Become Your Worst Self! We have 9 new playbooks to mess with, all themed around villainous or evil Eidolon powers. In this episode, you'll meet the first five of the characters for this season:

The Zealot: Anna/Alpha, played by Fabby

The Sealed Evil: Lavender Spadeheart/Flip.exe, played by Maxie

The Gamer: Marci Campbell, played by Lexi

The Collection: Hercule Heavensward, played by Mike

The Sovereign: L. E. Booktok, played by Molly (me!)

If you haven't listened to Eidolon before, this is a great jumping on point. It's a new season that's completely unrelated to any previous season. If you enjoy this episode, the next character creation episode will be released for free next week!

OR, you can head to patreon.com/eidolonplaytest and listen to it now for just $1 a month. You'll get every episode a week before it becomes public, which is a great deal imho. Join us!!