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Hey hey, first release of my vampire hookup TTRPG, it's not perfectly balanced yet but it's getting there 😊

Thanks @codaattheend and many friends for helping me playtest it <3

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[ID: a banner for a game. it is light tan with a crumpled paper texture, and reads "with breath & sword" in large blue font, and "a solo-journaling game that helps you fight anxiety as you fight monster" below it in smaller font. there is lineart of gauntlets lying over a sword with some flowers at the bottom. end ID]

You find yourself tied to the monsters. The scratchy feeling in your chest. The way your hands tremble. The sweat that dots your upper lip when your senses are telling you a monster is close, again, now, and it’s your job to fight it. To stand up for your ideals and stand up to the threat. Whether you tame it, or this is truly a monster that needs to be slain, only time will tell.

 You know you will succeed. You always have before. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be a challenge.

 Grab your gear. Put on your boots. You know how to find it. You know what to do.

 First, you just need to steady yourself.

[ID: a page spread from the game. it shows "step four" on one side, which goes over the five aspects of the game's oracle. on the other side it shows the first oracle component, where something you can taste determines what your heroic core is. the page is minimally designed, with a blue border and text on a white background, tan accents, and one image of a dragon. end ID]

With Breath & Sword is a solo-journaling TTRPG to help players combat anxiety. 

In the game, you play as a monster-fighter, who is being summoned once again due to the presence of a new monster. Each time a monster appears, you struggle with the emotional effects of the magic: effects that look a lot like anxiety. You must steady yourself before you go off to fight: in the game and in real life.

Over the course of WB&S, players will participate in grounding methods and breathing techniques to calm themselves from an anxiety attack. These methods also serve as the game's oracle in order to determine how the story goes. 

What You'll Need:

A safe space to play 

A method of writing or recording

[ID: a page spread from the game. it is the section called "the science" and goes over the psychology behind the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique, the 4-7-8 breathing method, and destroying journaling. it has a few lines about narrative and play therapy, and that the creator of the game used these methods in his social work with neurodivergent teens and adults. end ID]

check out the game on itch now!!

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*examines your pdf folder* have you read them all?

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Thanks so much for doing all this, I love what you do for enjoyers of ttrpgs!!

What I'm looking for is epistolary or long-distance, asynchronous games for multiple players. I know you've done lists of 2-player games that people can play in their own time (writing letters or journal entries back and forth, stating your actions in a message then waiting for the other player, etc) but I was wondering if there were any I could play with 3 or more players with different timezones & schedules at once.

Genre and playstyle are flexible, we love trying new mechanics! I've struggled to find games to fit this myself, so I hope you can have a little more luck. You're awesome for taking these requests and finding so many different games for people!

THEME: Asynch & Epistolary for 3 or More.

Hello friend! First of all, I’m going to send you to my Epistolary (Part 3) post because that was specifically for 3 or more players, as well as my first epistolary post because there were a number there that could also be played with a number of people.

But don't worry, there's more!

Angels of the Railway Stations, by Speak the Sky.

There’s only so much you can do alone, but you’re not alone. There’s only so much that can be done with any one meeting, but life is more than one meeting. As you go through the stages of Arrival, Stopover, and Departure, take notes of everything in the form of a letter to be sent on with the train when it leaves the station. These letters should give your fellow angels more context to help the traveller in need along the way. They’re also your only way to communicate with your colleagues and comrades.

Angels of the Railway Stations is an epistolary game for 2+ players in which you play a liminal community of lonely angels. Help lonely travellers in a world undergoing a great upheaval, then write about what you see and do to pass it on to the next angel down the line.

All of the rules for this game can fit on one page, and require you to rely on other players to determine what each of your passengers need and help them get to where they need to go - on time. Angels of the Railway Station references a game called Black Engines, which does not actually exist, which means that many parts of this game will require your play group to fill in the blanks. That being said, I think Angels of the Railway Station has plenty of potential when it comes to telling emotional stories.

Intersecting Orbits, by Ell Schulman.

For as long as there have been Orbiters, there has been the Interference. Spikes in data that have no business being there, garbled words, ghosts in the machinery. Few people believe truly in the existence of the Interference as an entity.The Interference does not care what they believe.

The planet below is alive. There are deep oceans and high mountains and biomes we do not have names for. There are plants and animals that do not conform to systems we know.

There are people who look up at the stars and wonder who else is out there.There is so much to explore. 

Intersecting Orbits is a game for three players, two of whom play Orbiters sending messages back and forth and one of whom plays the Interference who intercepts those messages and removes words from them. 

Using a deck of cards, the two Orbiters will try to communicate to each-other about something that is going on. Meanwhile, the Interference uses 2d6 to determine how many words of the message they can remove. You can probably use this method either by sending letters to each-other, or by writing e-mails or sending texts, so I think this game is definitely flexible in terms of how quickly you want to send messages to each-other, and how long you want the game to run.

Chronicle, by a.fell.

The world is coming to an end. It has been foretold, and so it shall be. We cannot stop it; we only wait, and observe, and recall.

This is a game to create a chronicle of a world, and to find the world again in the last seconds of its life. The game is different depending on which path you choose to take.

You will not play together. You might not play at the same time, or in the same place. You might not even know each other before you play this game.

When you play The Chronicler, you will play alone, across time, across worlds. There is foretelling that an end is coming. You are here to ensure that your life, your people, and your world, survive. The Witnesses will find your artifacts an unknowable amount of time later. They will observe, they will wonder, they will remember their own lives, and they will know you. The world they know is empty, and soon they, too, will be gone. But they will carry these moments with them.

Chronicle uses a tarot deck (or something similar) as an oracle, and requires some form of map for the Chronicler to add to. The Chronicler will draw from this deck to create the events, artifacts and messages from this world. Most of the Chronicler’s work is done by the time the Witnesses come into play, who will travel across the map, pick up artifacts left behind by the Chronicler, and use their own oracle decks to recall personal memories. Eventually, a cataclysm will fall, and the game will end.

Leaving Cambridge, by Nora Katz.

You were together once, a lifetime ago, in a place called Cambridge. It was a place you held dear—a place that you called home, even if just for a moment. But something strange or sinister happened, and now you are all gone, dispersed across countries, continents, and maybe even worlds. There are stories untold and things unsaid. This is your chance to say them. 

“Leaving Cambridge” is an intimate, asynchronous storytelling game that takes place through letters exchanged between a group of people who have parted ways. Over the course of a real-life calendar year, a group of players write letters to each other, piecing together what happened to them, trying to reconcile their checkered pasts with their current realities. As the letters arrive, this group of people will come to understand each other, and themselves, with more clarity—and, most likely, more questions. 

Leaving Cambridge is a setting-agnostic game, so you can set it at any time period and any technology level, as long as it is possible that all of the players at some point went to Cambridge together.. What remains true is that you were once friends, but you have since grown apart. You will draw from a deck of cards, with red cards reflecting memories you share and black cards representing your emotions. Writing will happen over four seasons, with an inciting reason for you to get back in touch with each-other, and generative prompts that encourage your characters to reveal pieces of themselves the longer that they write.

I’d Also Recommend…

When I Lived Here, by a grumpy little critter.

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After The Bomb

There's an official Fallout ttrpg. I've read it. It's okay!

There's also, completely fanmade, After The Bomb.

And I want to put After The Bomb on your radar, because it's very, very good.

ATB uses a simple d20 + stat system, with bonuses from gear and perks factored in. You have a HP track, which burns at both ends from radiation and damage, and also a survival track that breaks pieces of your equipment whenever it depletes. Rolls are player-made, and the system spends a lot of time in that osr headspace where it cares more about the choices the players make than how they built their character. The game's currency is Junk, and you spend it repairing your gear and crafting consumables.

Levelling up is surprisingly rich with choice, and fights and obstacles are tense and deadly. Again, the core mechanics are simple, but they use this simplicity to push complex choices towards the players. You see a piece of valuable Junk floating in a bog. Do you go in and take a point of radiation? Risk coming back later? Waste your own Junk fashioning a contraption to try and get it out?

After The Bomb comes with its own sandbox campaign set in Minnesota, plus a *lot* of GM support for stuff like factions, monsters, and basebuilding.

It's a gem in our current pre-apocalypse, and I strongly recommend giving it a look.

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just wrote a rule in underside that gives you a -1d penalty for "being a bitch". this games gonna be good yall

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It’s finally here, the updated version of BUTT&HEAD, Jam’s hack of GUN&SLINGER, is available now through Plus One Exp’s ZINE CLUB, and digitally on Itch!

Play as two halves of a centaur (the butt & the head) on an adventure through a magical world using the playing card-based MARKED&MADE system. In this updated edition, you'll find not only the original hack of GUN&SLINGER, but delightful cover art by Sinta Posadas, and brand new adventures from 3 fantastic creators!

91st Regiment of Hoof by Kevin Nguyen

Someone back home died. Brass redacted out all the nouns though so you can’t tell who; they ticked Operational Security and Morale boxes on the reasons stamp. Learned on your last tour not to worry about that kinda thing so much, not out here on the front.

Worrying’s the luxury of the rear and gear.

Camp Marigold by Charu Patel

Chill frosty air envelops you as you push aside the overgrown jasmine on these ruins. You and your campmates found this place weeks ago, much to the camp leaders' chagrin.

They refuse to investigate the strange items you've found; identical copies of random paraphernalia around camp: Saira's tail ribbon, Aliya's blue metal whistle, Archan's viewing glasses, and a cabin banner, all of which mysteriously disappear by the next morning.

The Apprentice by Liam McCrickard

Atop a mountain covered in snowy woods, SHE awaits you. HER legs are old and gnarled. HER hooves dig into the ground as deep as the roots of the oldest pine. HER back is hunched, with a spine jutting out like the ridges of the tallest peaks. SHE is the keeper of your kind’s oldest magics, and should you prove yourself, a teacher who can impart wisdom no other speaking soul remembers.

SHE says you will be given four trials, then SHE will know.

All the links below~

🐴Digital on Itch:

📖Physical Copies:

📚Zine Club, get cool stuff every month!:

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DEATH OF THE AUTHOR is a solo tarot TTRPG of character autonomy.

Play as a Character attempting to gain agency by wresting narrative control from their Author.

Gameplay involves drawing tarot cards for Scene Prompts, events written by the Author. The Character then edits these prompts to shape the story to their will.

Use caution - tampering with the narrative draws the attention of the Author, who might retaliate by using the Character’s own words against them.

Death of the Author will be crowdfunding on Backerkit starting May 14th. Follow the page to be notified when it launches!

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BLOOD BORG is funding on Kickstarter now for two and a half weeks :) a gutter punk urban fantasy with dumpster diving vampires and xeroxed zines of blood magic.

An attempt to distillate a lot of the feelings of my 20s: freedom to explore and find yourself, fear of who that self might be, sadness and anger at the world that doesn’t care about you, and power in finding your people and working towards making your life better.

Plus you can drain cops of blood to cast magic spells soooo hyfr.

Compatible with Mork Borg/Cy Borg but a standalone badass hardcover book of its own.

BLOODBORG.COM

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You have to take a vocational course to become a proper Wizard. Everyday folk might have picked up some things in secondary school, an amateur can still know their way around a staff or a wand but to get a license you need to have completed the course and passed the tests. Then you're a big fancy Wizard! But that's a lot of cost to have sunk into the thing and it does raise the question: are you sure you made the right call?

My editor-girlfriend described the Wizard playbook in PSYCHODUNGEON as Degree Regret: The Class. It's a lot about feeling stuck because of the time and effort you've put into something. A lot of the vulnerable moves are about facing this not being what you thought'd be like.

There's a decent chunk of why I quit teaching there. I also liked recasting the wizard as a working class job rather than something implicitly academic.

When you all make your psychoplumbers you ask questions to your right and left to establish some starting dynamics. Two of the Wizard's options really jab at the heart of the character.

What do you think I'd be happier as?

Why do you think I'm good at this job?

In PSYCHODUNGEON we delve into nightmarish psychostructures, battle monsters, navigate a hostile domain, and help the mind the dungeon sprung from gain closure. We do this for a meagre paycheck. On the surface we try to get by living our lives in a busy city that wouldn't miss you if you fell off the face of the planet.

Coming to Kickstarter this May. Please follow the pre-launch page. This is the first of a series of posts I'll do all about different aspects of the game. Do let me know if there's anything you're especially curious about.

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DEATH OF THE AUTHOR is a solo tarot TTRPG of character autonomy.

Play as a Character attempting to gain agency by wresting narrative control from their Author.

Gameplay involves drawing tarot cards for Scene Prompts, events written by the Author. The Character then edits these prompts to shape the story to their will.

Use caution - tampering with the narrative draws the attention of the Author, who might retaliate by using the Character’s own words against them.

Death of the Author will be crowdfunding on Backerkit starting May 14th. Follow the page to be notified when it launches!

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So Godslingers begins with a Storytelling Phase. Each player rolls 3d6 and then uses a variety of tables to guide filling in an Old God's concept, domains and various interwoven stories.

These gods are all long dead by the time Godslingers Roleplaying Phase begins, but their legacy and power lingers in the hands of interstellar drifters.

Godslingers had a really loooong dev period. Like I was working on it simultaneously with the Old Gods and Young Guns setting guide and that came out in '22. It went through various GMless iterations (the book does still include rules for GMless play but that's no longer the focus) and the relationship between the gun and the Godslinger used to be much more fiddly and abstract mechanically.

Buuuut the Storytelling Phase was actually pretty set from very early on. So when it made sense to include some pre-written gods in Thirty Foes OR Once again, we are defeated (a storytelling/mapmaking game about powerful outsiders protecting a dead end village from an entire army, inspired by Seven Samurai) the way I did was I just went through the Storytelling Phase from Godslingers by myself multiple times.

Anyway all three books set in the Fourth Galaxy are pretty sick and also completely stand alone, as much as they can inform and weave into each other.

Godslingers is out now brand new and you can get all three Fourth Galaxy books in a bundle for a tenner discount.

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Had the pleasure of working with @ratwavegamehouse to design the cover for her upcoming game Psychodungeon

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DEATH OF THE AUTHOR is a solo tarot TTRPG of character autonomy.

Play as a Character attempting to gain agency by wresting narrative control from their Author.

Gameplay involves drawing tarot cards for Scene Prompts, events written by the Author. The Character then edits these prompts to shape the story to their will.

Use caution - tampering with the narrative draws the attention of the Author, who might retaliate by using the Character’s own words against them.

Death of the Author will be crowdfunding on Backerkit starting May 14th. Follow the page to be notified when it launches!

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Hey everyone, please consider buying the 2024 itch.io Palestinian Relief Bundle- it's 373 games, game-making assets, tabletop roleplaying games, zines, and comics for a minimum of just 8 USD! They have a goal of 100,000 USD, and as of the time I'm writing this post, they have 8 more days to reach it.

Link will be in the reblog!

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Any games about cross-country racing or just racing in general? I've had this setting with this grand race for riders of fantasy creatures and its rough trying to find a game that fits it.

THEME: Racing Games.

Hello friend, so I have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that I found a number of racing games! The bad news is that all of the games I found are built with the expectation that you are racing machines, not creatures. I don’t think that makes these games completely non-viable, but pretty much all of them will probably need a little bit of re-wording or hacking in order to become games about racing living things.

SUPERSTARS Racing Icons, by Tristan B Willis.

The air screams around your helmet as you hurtle past the final turn and towards the finish line. Your best friend looks to make a pass that could take both of you out. Do you play it safe and risk losing, or play for glory and risk everything? 

Welcome to Superstars: Racing Icons.

Trophies are nice, but racing careers are short and you’re here to build something that lasts. Is that a rabid group of loyal fans who follow your every move? A list of sponsors willing to keep you comfortable long after your racing days? Or just one meaningful connection with a teammate, a rival, a friend, a lover? 

The designers expect you to translate this game into a setting that works for you, but plenty of the language expects elements like sponsors, a PR team, and vehicle terminology. The game is GM-less and comes with a menu of backgrounds, which define your character’s narrative role in the race.

Because Superstars is a Firebrands game, instead of freeform play the group instead moves through a series of scenes, embodied through various mini-games. This means that this game is well-built for telling some kinds of stories, but not others. Much of the game is about the tension between the riders; the races are simply methods through which you can explore that tension.

If you want a game that is focused on the spectacle of the race as much as it is on the race itself, you might want to take a look at Superstars: Racing Icons.

Speedway Showdown, by Bammax Games.

Speedway Showdown is an ultralight, GMless minigame for two players that aims to quench your need for speed! Built on Cezar Capacle's Push SRD, Speedway Showdown begs you to put the pedal to the metal and take risks to walk away with the glory. Take a single turn on the tracks and reap a lone victory, or form your own circuit with your friends and race for the top of the ranks!

This is a business card rpg, so it’s very simple and therefore probably pretty easy to hack. Instead of damage to your car, your creature might get wounded or spooked, and you can replace mechanical benefits to reasons why your creature might suddenly get a boost of speed. This is also GM-less, so everyone can throw their hat in the ring for the title!

The game is probably going to be over pretty quickly, since there’s not much to it, so this would be a good set of rules to couch within a larger game.

Ghost Kart Racers, by kumada1.

Lord Aoyama was your master. He wronged you and killed you, but in doing so he made two mistakes.

He angered your spirit.

And he left an unsecured motor-kart in his stable.

Ghost Kart Racing is a 20 page supernatural racing trpg in which you shred rubber, use power-ups, and unhinge your entire face to devour the man who wronged you.

This is a multiplayer game that relies on different sided dice to represent your Kart (or perhaps, in your case, your Steed). You take turns flicking your dice towards a finish line, with the goal of hitting it exactly, with falling short being considered just as bad as overshooting. The game also comes with extras for customizing your racers, creating custom tracks, and adding Charms that change how your vehicles work.

I think the rules for this game can definitely be separated from the story that the designer has introduced, and the idea of having different steeds with different strengths may make sense if each racer is riding a different creatures. You could re-tool the charms into abilities that different fantasy creatures might have, such as a glowing body part or the ability to jump over low obstacles. The game also has optional skills that represent your character’s abilities outside of racing, which you could change to reflect what your characters might need to be good at when they’re not out on the race track.

Dirt Eaters and Grid Beef, by e.a.

DIRT EATERS is a dice game where players compete to see who can get the best score driving their cars through dangerous tracks! Players build the tracks through dice rolls, ranking each sector on a scale from 1-5. Rolling six sided dice, players have to get a number of successes equal to the difficulty of each sector to score a point. The more dice you use, the harder you're driving, and the more damage your car takes! Replenish your dice by 'repairing' your car between stages. It's a game of resource management, strategy, and a little bit of luck!

GRID BEEF is a roleplaying game about racing. In this game, players will be racing cars against one another in a series of events across the world. In between races, they'll form friendships, clash with bitter rivals, and be submerged in the world of politics and drama that comes with racing at a world championship level. Sometimes, the biggest drama happens off the track!

Both of these games follow the same core mechanic, in which a number of d6’s are rolled and the results over a certain number are counted as successes. While DIRT EATERS focuses on damage and hazards, GRID BEEF is more about the relationships between the racers, and how you interact with people affect your performance on the track. I think the core rules can work on their own, and the outside elements are examples on what can affect the race depending on what is important to you. In both cases, there’s probably a good amount of hacking and home-brew that you’ll have to do, but the benefit of looking at both of these is that you can see examples of how the core game can be re-tooled to focus on elements that matter to you.

Love by the Quarter Mile, by Dice Monkey.

Rev your engine and prepare to fire the NOS. In Love by the Quarter-Mile, you play as a street racer trying to make it while fighting for family. This one-page tabletop RPG is quick and dirty, providing you with everything you need to use to play games in the same vein as Fast and Furious and Gone in 60 Seconds.

This is another short game that I think can be very easily hacked to turn this game into a game about racing animals, rather than racing cars. You can replace the car tags with animal tags to differentiate the creatures that you are riding. However, being fast isn’t the only asset you have here - the game is also about fighting and personal relationships. You can fight rivals or other characters, and the rules are loose enough that you could use fists, or weapons that match your setting. You can also have arguments that can tax your emotions, so if there are personal stakes in the competition, you can enjoy some hair-raising drama in between each race.

Also Check Out

Gravity RIP, by lukewestaway.

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Now at IPR: Transformation

The changes started subtly: cravings and intrusive thoughts. But they soon built into noticeable physical changes, followed by a complete change in perception. It isn’t clear what you will become, but you can no longer deny that you are becoming something.

Do you fight the change? Embrace it? In either case, there is no stopping the transformation. Whatever you are becoming, it is inevitable. At best, you might be able to wrest enough control over yourself to spare those around you.

Transformation is a Kafkaesque, body-horror, solo RPG. Take on the role of an unfortunate soul whose body and mind are becoming something they cannot yet imagine. As the game progresses, you will change, taking on both physical and mental monstrous changes. You’ll journal about the changes as you struggle to understand what’s happening and relate your understanding to those around you.

https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Transformation-Print-PDF.html