#ttrpg tables

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

today on my When All You Have is a D10 project: Rolling a 6 with a D100.

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1-16: Option 1

17-32: Option 2

33-48: Option 3

49-64: Option 4

65-80: Option 5

81-96: Option 6

97-100: Reroll

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if you get that last one you can reroll the ones column, tens column, or both, up to you. tune in next time for so fucking help me i WILL find an efficient way to substitute dice for a deck of playing cards

[rollingtablesiguess]

Rolls to Alarm Your Players

Want to spice the game up? Why not try alarming your players for no real reason? Make sure to make a show out of counting the dice before you roll.

[necromosss]

same brain? same brain

[katjohnadams]

My favorite four tools for running a game:

Yes, And: most people are familiar with this. You accept what the player is doing and add to it. "I go to open the door." "You open the door and a large friendly dog jumps out, pinning you to the ground."

No, But: a lot of people know this one, too. You aren't letting the player Do The Thing, BUT something else happens! "I try to stab the shop keep." "The shop keep dodges your attack, but trips and falls to the floor, dropping the key he was palming."

Yes, But: much less used but fun! The player's choice works, technically, but there's Unexpected Consequences! "I go to smash the box." "Your mace falls squarely on the chest but it deforms, absorbing the blow and revealing a massive row of teeth!"

No, And: use with caution, for moments when the Fuck Around has occurred, and now it's Find Out's initiative. "I'm going to try and seduce the guard." "Unbeknownst to you, the guards are all eunuchs under a vow of celebacy and he takes significant affront at your presumption."

I don't use these for everything, but they're great tools for when an action needs a bit of back-and-forth.

Have fun, don't die!

[safelynte]

A mech

And her pilot :)

[anim-ttrpgs]

If any of y'all had tips for aspiring TTRPG creators, what would they be? I'm hosting a "How to Make your own TTRPG" panel at a con this weekend, and anything to show folks from a fellow indie studio would be great!

Yeah a bunch. Each one of these could basically be its own post, but here are the condensed versions.

Social Media

You need social media. No one will ever hear of your game without a strong social media presence. And as much as it sucks, your best bet is probably tumblr. It’s the only populated social media site that allows your posts to be widely circulated without you having to pay, and also long form enough to actually include information. I dedicate one day a week entirely to social media and that’s just about the only reason we make any money at all.

Also, when using tumblr, the first five tags you put on a post are the most important, those are the tags that make it show up on people’s dashboards. The first twenty tags are the ones that make it show up in search results. Don’t put the name of your game in the first five tags generally, because if no one has heard of it yet, no one is following those tags.

Don’t Paywall Your Game

You deserve to be paid for your work if you indeed did any work at all (we’ll get to that), but that just isn’t the world we live in. Unless you have an advertising budget to essentially trick people into buying a game that might end up being crap, you need something to prove that your game is worth spending money on. Without an advertising budget, that proof has to be your game. Setting your game to pay-what-you-want, or providing “community copies,” lets people try your game before they buy. Plenty of people will buy up-front when given the option, and others who can’t afford it at that moment will download it for free then come back and pay later. Some people will never pay, but what that means for you is that they either never experience your game, or they pirate it. People experiencing your game, showing it to their friends, and talking about it is one of the most valuable pieces of advertisement you can ever have. It will ultimately lead to more people who are willing and able to pay learning about your game.

Start Small but Not Too Small

Do not make a one-page game for your first game. Do not be like us and make a 700-page game for your first game. Try to aim for something between 20 and 200 pages, especially if you’re one person or a small team.

Play and Read a lot of RPGs or Your Game Will Suck

Would you watch a movie by a director who had only ever watched one movie? Would you read a book by an author who had only ever read one book? Hell no, those would suck.

Read many rpg rulebooks, from many different genres and decades, play as many of them as you can (by the rules) to understand how the rules work and why they’re there. This will give you the creative tools you need to make something that isn’t just a weaker version of the last RPG you played. No, listening to "actual plays" does not count.

Most actual plays stray significantly from presenting a regular gameplay experience in favor of an experience that is entertaining for an audience. If you want to learn martial arts, you should be watching martial arts tournaments, not WWE.

If you want an actual play podcast that has my “actually mostly presents a real gameplay experience” approval, try Tiny Table.

If you say you don’t have time to read rulebooks, then you don’t have time to design a good game. Studying is part of the process of creating. If you don't, you won't even know about gleeblor.

This will let you know whether your "innovation" is more like "Cars don't need to run on gasoline!" or "Cars don't need crumple zones and airbags!"

The Rules Matter, So Design with Intent

The rules matter the rules fucking matter holy shit what you actually write down on the page matters I can’t believe this is actually the seemingly most needed piece of advice on this list. The. rules. matter.

Design your game to be played in the way you designed it. The rules affect the tone and genre of your game, they affect the type of people PCs can be and the kind of stories that will result from gameplay. Bonuses encourage PC behaviors, penalties discourage PC behaviors.

Do not fall for the trap of “oh well people will just play it their own way based on vibes anyway so it doesn’t matter what I write the rules to be.” Write that you wrote this game to be played by the rules and that significant changes to the rules mean that players are no-longer playing the game you made. Write like you deserve for your art to be acknowledged by its audience. If you don’t, then there is no point in anyone playing the game you made, because if the person who wrote it doesn’t even care what the rules say, why should anyone? The people whose “playing” of TTRPGs consists of never opening the rulebook and improving based on “vibes” will still do that no matter what, but the people who would have actually tried to engage with your game will find that it sucks if you don’t even care what the rules are yourself.

Playtest

You need to playtest your game if you want it to work as intended. You need multiple sets of eyes on it. If you don’t have the opportunity personally to do so, just release your game anyway with the acknowledgement that it’s unfinished. Call it an alpha or a beta version, and ask for people that do play it to give feedback, then update and fix the game based on that feedback.

Ignore Feedback

Most people do not have any game design credibility, perhaps least of all TTRPG players. You do not, in fact, have to listen to everything people say about your game. Once you ask for feedback, people will come to you with the most deranged, asinine, bad-faith “feedback” you can imagine, and then get really mad at you when you don’t fall to your knees and kiss their feet about it. You do not need to take this feedback at face value, instead you need to learn to read between the lines and find out which parts of the rules text are being misinterpreted by players, and which incorrect assumptions players are making about your game. Then, you update and improve the game by clearing those up. Only like 30% of “feedback” you receive will actually be a directly helpful suggestion in its own right at face value.

You can’t please everyone, and shouldn’t, so appeal to the people who actually like your game for being what it is, not the people who don’t.

Read Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Yeah this one sounds self-serving but hear me out. Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is as much a treatise on TTRPG game design as it is a game itself. When it presents mechanics and rules, it tells you what they are, why they are, how they are, and what you’re intended to do with them. This makes it an excellent example to read for anyone wanting to get serious about game design and learn how TTRPGs tick under the hood, and an excellent example of a TTRPG that expects players to play it the way it was written to be played, and why that is a good thing. Also you can download it for free.

[lostcompanyofficial]

🛡️Today really is full of surprises, isn't it? We heard your calls once again.. and!!

🔮New ROTEMNTEE alien - Wizard and Artificer mini prints are available for purchase!

🛡️These add ons are available for pledges starting from the $65 Standard Edition Tier!!  Please refrain from sharing image! Keep checking back here for all our updates!

Hoot n' hollering! Let's get this going!

[shadefish]

HI! more 2025 Lancer NPCs!! come check them out!!!

The Ace, The Rainmaker, and the Ronin! + Ultra variants!

check out my VTT token pack for more!

[ever-circling-skeletal-family]

idk what VTM storyteller needs to hear this but you do not need to know every single piece of the game’s world building or history to run a good chronicle!

[hdawg1995]

listen when you're playing a table top game, a role playing game, a game where you and your friends are playing characters and bouncing off of each other, just do shit. say shit. the first fucking thing.

the GM for the Lancer game i'm playing had a bad guy call our characters "union dogs" and i just fucking barked at him like a rabid dog.

in character my character barked like a rabid dog on coms to the bad guy.

we made MEMES about this moment!

just DO IT!

[theworldbrewery]

1d12 ways to complicate an encounter

A magic or mundane artifact generates an effect harmful to the PCs, but it is guarded by the monster's minions.

The encounter's setting starts to collapse during the battle, and all the combatants will need to escape.

A boss monster has a 'second form' that activates mid-way through the battle.

Traps are placed throughout the battlefield, and characters must be wary of them.

The PCs must complete a ritual while fending off attacks from the enemy.

The encounter area is a series of cliffs or platforms, forcing characters to jump around and risk falling, possibly into a pit, water, or lava.

There is a monster that uses the blink spell or tunneling to avoid attacks between its turns.

A minor enemy has the ability to summon or call for reinforcements every round.

There are three sides, not two, battling in this encounter.

A disastrous environmental effect, such as an avalanche, wildfire, or earthquake, occurs in the area, dealing damage and forcing the combatants apart.

An anti-magic pulse affects some areas of the battlefield periodically, suppressing spells and magical items when it is active.

The enemies are shockingly weak and easily defeated, but the PCs' goal isn't here -- the treasure chest is a mimic, or their princess is in another castle.

[tinytablepodcast]

Calling all Indie TTRPG Makers

Hi! We are always looking for new games to play! We do a rules explanation episode, 3-4 episodes actual play, and then a review episode (and hopefully an interview with the developers). Please email us at tinytablebusiness@gmail.com if you want us to play your game! We hope to hear from you!

[inonibird]

One of my TTRPG groups just played a one-shot of a game called Kosmosaurs, wherein you play as dinosaur space rangers cruising the galaxy and defending against evil. It's goofy and cheesy as hell, and our group FULLY embraced the Saturday-morning-80s/90s-cartooniness of it all (our ship came equipped with a canteen that served Lunchables and Little Hug Fruit Barrels, a Wreckreation Hall, 90s rock music that played whenever we took off, a Legally Distinct Alpha 5, and "hella cup holders"). I rolled up an energetic little Microraptor Pilot named Nib who has a fascination with collecting old technology (hence the aviator hat despite this being a space adventure), which came in handy when, during the climactic battle against a blaster-proof enemy, they found a convenient revolver and added a bonus to the attack because they are proficient in "old technology". xD Anyway, highly recommend Kosmosaurs for a lighthearted one-shot!

[andysuriano]

Shreddy or not.. here we come!! Remember to follow @lostcompanyofficial , we might post the full piece...

Kickstarter launching real soon, make sure to follow to get notified!! Link in bio

[ahcoffeebeans2]

its here (pre-orders only)