sirobvious

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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.

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Ancient Language Write-in Skill from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. This Skill is optional, and if given to your investigator, must be set at a minimum rating of +1.

Ancient Language (Knowledge) || Ancient Language is a measure of a character’s knowledge of at least one ancient language, such as Latin, Ancient Greek, etc. The player may pick any number of ancient languages for this Skill to represent, up to the Narrator’s discretion. (It’s hard enough to learn a living language, let alone a dead one. It might start to break immersion if your hard-boiled detective from the bad side of town happens to be proficient in Ancient and Medieval Latin, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit.) Use this skill when a character needs to read, write, or, God-forbid, speak an ancient language. This Skill may also be used to identify the age and culture of a text, to determine whether a text is authentic or a forgery, or for anything else related to ancient languages. 

Unlike the regular Language skill listed below, it takes a Skill roll to even read, write, or speak basic information, because these languages are not perfectly understood even by expert historians. Additionally, if an investigator needs to use any other Skill that would require understanding an ancient language (especially Paperwork or any Interpersonal Skill), this would first prompt an Ancient Language roll (which is also an Investigative Roll if the initial Skill roll is). This may add penalties to the second roll, as listed below:

Full Success: No penalty.

Partial Success: -1 penalty added to the other skill roll.

Failure: -2 penalty added to the other skill roll. 

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how does the reading comprehension of tumblr users match up against the students you teach

look.....I may have 1 or 2 students in my younger classes that have issues e.g. 14 year old who will always end up working on the wrong google classroom post because he didn't watch and listen when I showed them where to find the work, 15 year old who wrote his whole exam about the wrong thing because "I didn't realise there were essay questions at the top of the page"

however. these are young teenagers. who are still learning that skill. and sometimes it's my fault for not making instructions clear enough. most of this is down to clear instructions, and other issues of auditory processing from students (and me talking too fast)

you lot get to go back and double check, reread what you're commenting on, think it over, THEN send the ask. and I assume most of you are over the age of 14 so.....

I think the main issue is people not caring if they've read things correctly here. they have the option to, for example, check the FAQ and choose not to, because they can't be bothered. and honestly, whatever you do you, but don't get pissed when I put you on blast and make fun of you for asking why there's a subsection in the bracket

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Have you played EUREKA : Investigative Urban Fantasy ?

By A.N.I.M @anim-ttrpgs

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is a neo-noir investigation-focused RPG with (as you can probably guess from the title) a paranormal twist. Eureka fills several voids we have noticed in the TTRPG space. Leave behind the days of "We walk into the room and roll Investigate." Eureka supports investigation to a degree we haven’t seen before, ensuring that searching for clues is a granular and player-driven process, but also ensuring that the whole story doesn’t grind to a halt after one single failed investigation check, without the GM having to drop any extra hints.

Though most PCs will be mundane humans—or perhaps because most PCs will be mundane humans—Eureka also supports playing monstrous PCs, such as a vampire, in a way we have never seen before. This isn’t just a watered-down stat bonus, it’s like playing an almost entirely different game, with all the monster’s strengths and weaknesses to account for while solving the mystery, plus the added incentive to keep it a secret from the other PCs as well as their players.

If you like or are interested in Call of Cthulhu, Monster of the Week, Dresden Files, Delta Green, X-Files, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Apocalypse Keys, or Gumshoe, you’ll probably find something in Eureka to really enjoy.

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Faces of Black Mass: Buttons

A dapper young frog with no much to say!

Listen now!

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HABROMANIA (Symphony_Sonata, Release Date: TBA)

HABROMANIA is a dreamy (or nightmarish) Alice in Wonderland-inspired RPG that follows 19-year-old Alice as she tries to escape the surreal, cozy hellscape that is Wonderland—hopefully with her sanity intact. Alice wakes up at the bottom of a hole with a pounding headache and no memories of how she landed there- or memories in general, actually.

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longing

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editing the vampire trait in Eureka has us saying shit like "okay, imagine a perfect sphere of darkness bisected by a rectangular prism of light"

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Welcome to tumblr page of The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery (A.N.I.M.)!

We are a small independent team of LGBT and disabled individuals who make innovative and well-polished tabletop roleplaying games that have a lot to say, best known for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.

Combined, our team has over 20 years of experience.

Continue reading for more information about us, our games, and more!

Our Games

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is a groundbreaking TTRPG that revolutionizes mystery investigation of all kinds!

Leave behind the days of "We walk into the room and roll Investigate." Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is a TTRPG all about investigation, and its purpose-driven mechanics let players take initiative, use their characters' unique strengths to find clues, and deduce conclusions themselves. We post about it in-depth a lot, so check out our blog for more info, or just read it yourself! Payment is optional!

We plan to support Eureka for many years to come through supplements and adventure modules. It comes with a short adventure module made specifically for teaching you, your players, and their characters the ropes, but you can also find the first set of higher-stakes adventures right here!

The Eye of Neptune and FORIVA: The Angel Game

Two adventure modules for use with Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy!

Eureka: The Fanservice Files

A mini-expansion originally intended to just be an April Fools thing, but then turned into a real expansion! This features several new character Traits and powers!

Eureka: The XXX-Files

Another mini-expansion, featuring several new character Traits and optional rules!

"Eureka: Cold Open"

Not actually a game, rather a short-story set in the world of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.

Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG

An asymmetric comedy game of drama and drow. Players either take the role of a brutal mistress whom everything she says goes, whether she understands what she’s talking about or not, and whose position of dominance is maintained by the respect of her peers, respect that hinges on how brutal and controlling she is to her subordinates; or an array of pathetic servants who are helpless without their mistress’s “leadership,” (and maybe even be more so with it).

Edge Hedge Arena

This goofy omage to the Sonic the Hedgehog fanbase of the 2000s and 2010s is more of a party game than a conventional TTRPG, but that’s just means it’s fast to play and play again. The game will pair you with a real Sonic OC, so you can stat them out and battle them against others in the ultimate blood sport.

Our Mission Statements

1. To provide a source of income for those of our team who cannot support themselves by any regular means through disability.

To this end, we ask for your support as fans, if you want us to be able to continue to create more of the work you love. We put our games up in beta for feedback and extra publicity/support while we work diligently on finishing them, and as a completely independent and unsponsored studio, we are entirely dependent on word-of-mouth from fans like you to bring our projects in front of new eyes and keep us afloat through sales and patreon subscriptions.

What you can do to ensure that we can support ourselves and continue operations:

Follow us on tumblr and bluesky

Reblogging/retweeting/whatever our posts on these sites, even if you don't have many followers, makes a huge difference and is actually how we get most of our new fans and patreon subscribers.

Talk about us!

Play our games, tell your friends about them, make posts about your adventures or characters from our games, make homebrew stuff, etc. Like with the social media posts, this is the only way the word gets out about who we are and what we do! Without word-of-mouth, we're dead in the water.

Subscribe to our Patreon!

You get monthly rewards such as Eureka updates, adventure modules, short stories, previews of new games, etc. It also gets you into our patron-exclusive discord server!

Buy, or just download, our games on Itch.io

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Eureka Adventure Modules Vol. 1

Edge Hedge Arena

Money helps a lot, but even just downloading them for free gives us a boost in the algorithm and gets more eyes on us!

Donate on Ko-fi How this helps is pretty obvious.

Buy our snoop merchandise

We only get a small cut of this, but the stuff is pretty cool, and they're good conversation starters!

2. To fight back against the overwhelming hegemonic monopoly held over the TTRPG artform by Wizards of the Coast. This goes deeper than you think.

We don’t just promote our own games, we promote the games of others, and healthy play habits as well through the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club!

This is a welcoming and diverse space for fans of TTRPGs to discuss and play them. Plenty of different games will be running at any given time, but the main “book club” aspect of it is that people nominate RPGs they’d like to play, then the nominations are voted on regularly. Whatever wins, we all read and play. People are sorted into play groups based on schedule compatibility, so it’s very flexible.

Players are strongly encouraged to buy the RPG themselves to support the authors, but if you cannot for any reason, a PDF will always be provided for you. We have raised hundreds of dollars for indie and small press RPGs this way, and the community just keeps growing! If you’re a TTRPG designer, feel free to come in and nominate your own game!

Contact Us

Come talk to us in the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club or our patreon-exclusive discord server, or send us an email at anim.contactus@gmail.com!

You can also message us on tumblr and bluesky!

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I'm a little out of the loop, what happens if anim doesn't reach it's monthly goals? I could only afford to back the kickstarter, does eureka get cancelled?

Eureka and almost all of the various Kickstarter promises are currently available on itchio in a playable state, so Eureka isn’t at risk of getting canceled.

However, as for what the deal is with our finances, without going into unnecessary detail, one of our team members only has a confirmed place to live so long as they can prove that A.N.I.M. is making roughly 15% more in income each month, until it hits a threshold of regularly making at least $4,000 per month.

If we fail to hit these quotas too many times, that team member’s financial and living situation are at risk of becoming very unstable, which is not only very bad for them obviously, but will cripple the whole team’s ability to continue to do what we do.

That’s why it’s so urgent that we hit these quotas. If anyone wants to see A.N.I.M. succeed, or just wants to keep a disabled person financially stable, please consider the links below.

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if you're in Europe PLEASE consider signing the Stop Destroying Games initiative. the deadline is July 31st 2025. i've posted about it before; it aims to create legislation for publishers to stop killing the games you pay for and to provide an end-of-life plan for live-service products. thank you!!!

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I still think that whenever people get incredulous when they hear that Eureka has combat rules even though it’s an investigation-based game what they’re imagining is the party is investigating when they suddenly encounter 1D6 mobsters or vampires or something that they have to wordlessly fight for an hour and a half of session time to get EXP then go back to the investigating.

It’s not like this.

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Real talk, did anyone try to make a game with multiple gms?

I have seen multiple games discuss rotating GM duties. Magical Land of Yeld for one explicitly encourages switching GMs every once in a while. It’s a cool game, I recommend checking it out!

There’s also Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG by @anim-ttrpgs which splits what I think one might call its “GM roles” between two players: the Narrator (a more traditional GM who simply describes the situation the player characters find themselves in and calls for checks as the situation demands it) and the Spider Goddess (a player who observes the player characters’ actions and how well they conform to dark elf society’s byzantine social rules and serves out punishments for breaches in etiquette; something which they are incentivized to do because they are rewarded for acting in this role and those rewards carry forward to when the player is in a player’s seat).

Besides this, me and my friend @invidiavoncarstein have toyed with the idea of a fantasy RPG that splits the GM role between two players: one acting as a sort of a referee, a neutral arbiter and adjudicator of the rules, the other acting as a sort of a representative of “the bad guys,” effectively a player with very specific rules governing how they can run the opposition to the protagonists. It would be fun to do something with this idea, probably with mechanical incentives for the bad guys to act in ways that conform to genre convention (like making big speeches, leaving characters alive because they’re not seen as threats, etc.), but it would of course require a lot of work!

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I love twitter