#Dev-D

[redspringstudio]

Ok but… hear me out 🥴

[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.

[cubbihue]

Ya know, Timmy deliberately making it harder for a kis to become a Fairy, so they wouldn't have to deal with that burden

It can make for a interesting story. Especially if Dev ever found out, I think he'd be angry at Timmy and think of him as selfish. And since this is Dev, he might even accuse others like Hazel, Wanda, Cosmos, and of course Peri, to all being against him. To Dev, they don't actually care about him, just his wishes. Even if Timmy isn't an antagonist, to Dev he could be no different from one.

It would make for an interesting story! Although, realistically, Dev wouldn't care much for becoming a fairy. It won't solve his problems of wish granting or the fact that what he actually wants is the attention of his father. Being a fairy ain't fixing that.

It is a nice thought experiment though.

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

[starmocha]

Love and Deepspace + Tumblr Text Post ↳ Zayne, Part 2

[jewishicequeen]

New art supplies and a new hyperfixation(get me out of here!!!)

[felassan]

New interview video from TheGamer: 'Exclusive Interview with The Directors of Dragon Age: The Veilguard'

"Will there be returning characters? Will the light prevail against the darkness? Will our comic book and graphic novel knowledge of Dragon Age finally come into play?"

[source]

The video has some footage from the DA:TV booth at SDCC.

Info from this video:

More will be shown of the skill trees over time

"We have 700 new unique characters to talk to"

This may be the biggest game they've ever made

"Rivain, that more tropical feel. Something we've never really been able to do before in Dragon Age is, what does the coast of Rivain look like?"

Lots of love has been poured into how the areas look. They all look and feel different, but also coherent and consistent with the style of the game as a whole

The writers did a good job of finding the light in the darkness of this story

Just after timestamp 5 mins 0 secs, John says Emmrich's surname Volkarin aloud

Emmrich's character design is kind of like the more classical, Hollywood actor type

On returning characters, they're excited for people to see them, especially in the context of how 10 years have passed in-world since the last DA

Each choice in the game, especially the major ones, has significant consequences on gameplay, what content is available to you, and also how characters in the world regard you. "No choice should be easy, we never want to make players feel like there's a right choice. There's always going to be a consequence, some that you don't expect, and some that change the world in real ways"

On casting - Ashley: "Casting is a collaboration. The ensemble that the companions create was basically where we started. We put the character art on the wall, we saw the writing, we auditioned vastly and we assured that the cast was very dynamic and complimenting, and opposing, to each other. We spent a lot of time in getting those companions the juiciest they could possibly be"

The acting talent was cast across 5 years

[aleanas-silverquill]

A statistical outlier.

[mythalism]

i am genuinely enjoying cyberpunk on its own and am not ALWAYS being haunted by veilguard's failures i promise but the blatant comparisons DO jump out every so often and god does it look horrible for bioware. a whole damn quest about reuniting the old man rebel terrorist living in your head with his ex-girlfriend and taking them to the movies so they can get a bit of closure after 50 years apart... only to have them be unable to reconcile because of the secrets between them and she storms out..... wow sure cant think of anywhere else id have loved to see a quest like that

[crayonfodder]

who up transfemming they faves

[noreemii]

My RPG game "ANN 【Snowman's Miracle】" Chapter 1 is OUT NOW!⛄✨🎄

My Christmas gift to you all, thank you very much for supporting me all this time, I hope you have a nice Christmas and a prosperous New Year! Have fun! 🎁🌟

An RPG Christmas novel game!🎅 🎄 🎁 ✨ For more information, I recommend checking the page.⛄🥕

🌟  GENERAL INFO 🌟

☆Platform: Windows ☆Year: 2024 ☆Genre: Christmas Novel ☆Engine: RPG Maker MZ ☆Origin: Colombia ☆Game time: 1-2 hours

🌟  FEATURES  🌟

★ Original story in an original universe ★ Cute characters ★ Absurdly funny humor(?) ★ 1 Ending + 1 Unlockable Extra ★[1/4] Chapters

🎄AVAILABLE   TRANSLATIONS🎄

☆ Español by Noreemii

☆ English by DeliaDollHeart

☆ Italiano by Hermetics Pontified ☆ Korean(한국어) by 프사Peusa

[mregg109]

i wanna squeeze this frog

[bastart13]

Version Update:

Added Helena and Saerys' POV chapters (3 each) to the "extras" menu. They become unlockable after completing each of their first seasons.

Sprite and expression updates

Typo fixes

UI updates

Overhauled progress system. Note: currently, this will update your previous saves though future updates will fully transition to the new system of tracking which episodes have been unlocked

[anim-ttrpgs]

It’s my birthday, buy A.N.I.M. projects, on sale as cheap as they’ve ever been.

[cubbihue]

could you draw Hazel comfort Dev?

Hazel's helping to keep Dev's mind distracted at the nurse's office!

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

[berrysims]

emmy's family (her mom jody and brother jackson) visited to help her with her pregnancy and to celebrate winterfest.

[ghoulspaw]

This part broke me 💔