#How to play

[cyanomys]

Hey TTRPG nerds

Anybody got recommendations for indie ttrpg youtubers? I'm looking for content that is broadly not D&D-specific, and not actual plays. So, video essays/reviews of games, how-to-plays, GMing/playing advice, game design, etc.

[eflen-n-reegee]

Inspired by @chompchompchu’s How to Play series.

Draw what you would look like as an animatronic. Feel free to design some variants, too - a nightmare version, a glamrock version, etcetera!

Find a recipe and make your own pizza.

Work on some of the activities in the Survival Logbook.

Wrap yourself tightly in a blanket and pretend you’re hiding inside your favorite animatronic.

Jumpscare your toys.

Try to move like an animatronic.

Design your perfect pizzeria - complete with play equipment and activities!

Make audio logs and imitate Phone Guy.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Learning How to Play Forged in the Dark: Part 1, The Action Roll.

If you have never played a Forged in the Dark game before, picking up one can be intimidating, and that includes Protect the Child. I’ve talked about some general pieces of Forged in the Dark play before, but today I’m going to try and bridge the gap a little more by explaining the basics of the Action Roll, as well as Position and Effect.

The Action Roll.

In most Forged in the Dark games, the Action Roll consists of rolling a pool of 1-4 d6’s and looking for the highest number. Let’s look at the different outcomes.

6 = success. Multiple 6’s (Crit) are like a Nat 20 - you get the best possible outcome!

4 / 5 = partial success. You do the thing, but you also get a consequence or a cost.

1-3 = failure. You likely don’t do the thing - and the situation gets worse.

This is the basic roll for the bulk of Forged in the Dark games, and everything else stems from this rule.

Alright, now let’s talk about two axis of detail that are added to the Action Roll: Position & Effect.

Position

Position is how the GM communicates the difficulty of the thing that you, the player, are trying to do. In other words, it describes how bad things could get if you fail. There are three different Positions: Controlled, Risky and Desperate.

Controlled -> Failure is more like an annoyance, or something you could potentially avoid.

Risky -> Failure is going to suck a little.

Desperate -> Failure is going to suck a lot.

Effect

Effect is how the GM communicates the potential of success. To describe it in another way, it’s a measure of how much of your goal is achievable. There are five different levels of Effect:

None -> As is, you can’t do it.

Lesser -> You can do it… kinda.

Standard -> You can do it.

Greater -> You can do it well.

Extreme -> You can do it with the best possible result.

Position and Effect are combined to communicate to the player the stakes, as well as provide a shorthand to detail the span of possible outcomes based on the roll. The default combination is Risky/Standard - failure might suck a little, but if you succeed, you can do the thing. However, depending on the narrative situation or the rolls that have happened previously, you might be in a fire-fight with just a knife (that’s pretty Desperate), or perhaps an ally has handed you a grenade (that’s probably going to have Greater Effect).

This is a chart that indicates some of the outcomes that may happen depending on the result you get depending on your Position. The bottom row lays out the five possible Effects, and the number of ticks on a clock that they might correspond to.

On my next post, I’m going to explain how you combine Position & Effect with the tools on your character sheet. This is just a starting point - players have a lot of control over what the final outcome looks like!

If you want to start learning how to play Protect the Child, I recommend taking a look at the Google Spreadsheets linked on the store page and flipping through the character tabs. The Quickstart characters are 90% fleshed out and can give you an idea of what different character pieces can look like, and there’s a rules reference for how to roll underneath the stats for each character.

I also believe that playing is one of the easiest ways to learn, so if you want some hands on experience, hop into the playtest discord! There is at least one game happening every week designed to be easy for first-timers to hop into and give it a whirl.

If you want to read more about Forged in the Dark play, you can check out my intro to Forged in the Dark, as well as my explanation of Clocks!

[calicokidd]

- If you can't buy MLP toys, you can make papercraft! There's a lot of printables online, but you can also draw them if you don't have a printer!

- Write new episodes for the show and then act it with your ponies !

- Create a Cutie Mark for yourself, then draw it on your face/leg/arm. Let others guess your special talent !

- Create a new place in Equestria! Is it a big city or a village? What species reside there? Does it have a magic source? What about the ruler?

- Choose a species of pony you want to be! You can make wings out of fabric or paper and become a pegasus; a tiara and paper can make you an unicorn! ; Make both of them and become an alicorn ! You can even make a crown and pretende to be royalty!

- Earth ponies are known for their strength, so lift your stuffies and show them what you got!

- Ponies are not the only creatures in Equestria, there's also zebras, gryphons, hippogriffs, dragons and lots more! How about pretending you're a different species? Tell your origin to your pony friends!

- My Little Pony has lots of songs, so sing your favorites! Then.. write your own songs based on your adventures!

- After every adventure or every day, write a letter to Celestia talking about your feelings and what you learned (decor it a lot, Celestia loves reading your letters!) Keep them in a box (your Equestria mail) and open them after some time!

- Pretend you're Pinkie Pie; Bake something! Make some fake food for your stuffies; Be sure to tell everyone to be happy and smile!; Throw a party!!

- Pretend you're Rainbow Dash; She's super fast, so run a lot!; Customize your outfits with rainbows to make them 20% cooler; Make yourself some wings and pretend to fly! Make some dance movements as if you're a wonderbolt doing acrobatics in the air

- Pretend you're Rarity; Customize your clothes!; Take some old fabrics or thrift some clothes and make outfits for your plushies; Buy fake gems and stick them into everything !!; She's the element of generosity, so give your friends some gifts !

- Pretend you're Fluttershy; If you have pets, play with them; Take care of your pet stuffies! Choose a place of your room a turn it into a sanctuary; Play in the nature!

- Pretend you're Applejack; Learn recipes that use apples! It can be fake food too; Applejack is strong, so show your strength by lifting some boxes!; take some apple seeds and harvest them

- Pretend you're Twilight Sparkle; Read a lot!; Try learning something new; Teach others about the power of friendship!

Feel free to request how to play posts! :)

[pink-crayon-princess]

Ok this might seem really silly, but what are some good gifts to give your dolls/stuffed animals for Christmas? I always put up a mini tree for them but this year I'm thinking of wrapping tiny presents too :) 🎄🧸🎁

[montypythonswine]

A Minecraft Movie (2025)

If I wasn’t going to see this movie with a friend, would I have seen this film? No in fact when I saw the trailer for this film I said to myself that I wouldn’t see it (but no other movies were really of interest apart from this one and my friend suggested it).

I have a love/hate relationship with the video game Minecraft (of which the film is based on). I play it occasionally when I am bored and have nothing better to do. I start playing it and I think 'ooh this is fun!' and then it's night-time which is absolutely terrifying especially when the monsters come out (the enderman is my least favourite, that is the scariest creature ever and I got killed by it once as well as a polar bear).

Anyway to the actual movie, I thought the dialogue in the film was forced and cringey. There were jokes but they weren't very funny (I did find 1 part slightly funny, it wasn't because of the dialogue but basically the characters are about to get eaten by zombies and Jack Black's character Steve comes in to save them and 'Lil Boo thang' by Paul Russell starts playing and I just thought it was such a random choice of song to play whilst he's killing zombies and completely unexpected that it made me laugh.

The plot is silly but it is a film based on a video game so I don't know what I expected. I mean Jennifer Coolidge (yes she's been forced into this film) runs over a villager and then they start a relationship and at the end of the film get engaged?! I was just sitting there thinking wtf.

I was also slightly worried seeing this film as I have seen videos on social media of people throwing popcorn everywhere during the film and I thought that might happen. Luckily it didn't. The cinema wasn't that full. Although maybe it might had made the film more interesting.

At least I don't have to watch it again now that I've watched it once

[slipperychip]

How to play my fan-made card game, Guys of War! 1/3

[the-campaign-coach]

Game Review #4- Wanderhome

This past weekend I had the pleasure to play my 89th RPG in the Magpie Games Server, and it was a wonderful one in Wanderhome. Looking over my list of games, I am hard pressed to find a single other that lives up to the premise and promise of completely removing what many consider to be a core pillar of RPGs. Wanderhome is an RPG doesn’t discourage combat, but simply forbids it.

This was in fact how I was pitched Wanderhome, as a game where the core resolution will never come from violence,  and its been on my to play list for many years because of it. I was never able to find a game of it on Start Playing or at cons that fit my schedule, and with such a twist in the foundation of RPGs, I was hoping to experience it as a player before I ran it. I was very excited to have this chance, and had a wonderful GM who also helped us explore some of the other unique concepts that make this game shine. 

This game has a collaborative world building element to it, but at least as we ran it, it starts with the world as defined by the relationships our characters have bult with each other before the game even begins. As I explained this to my partner on a hike the day after, our party isn’t meeting for the first time in a dark tavern, given their mission by a old man who will either end up saving or betraying us later in the adventure. I have played a lot of games that ask us to point to other players at the table, and create a fiction about our relationships to each other, but Wanderhome particularly excels at this. Since so much of the world can be defined in this stage, it really helps flesh out a world that really is only defined in the book as a (recently) peaceful place. When you start to define the relationship between two PCs, its takes the choices we made in a vacuum about our own PC make more sense. I chose to make a circus performer, and when I asked  the question “how does my PC get on your nerves”, to another player, embodying their child character, they told me they had already gotten sick during our travels of the stories about growing up in that life. I of course could reject that fact, or twist it to better fit my narrative, but instead it gave me an opportunity to lay further into my hyper rabbits, tendencies and flesh out a flaw that gives the character more dimensions. 

Now that we have a more firm idea about our characters and the world they live in as defined by our relationship to each other, we then got to spend some time defining the world we would interact with. The GM had some helpful starting prompts picked out since we were doing a one shot in 4 hours, which prevented some analysis paralysis, and got us along our way. From that one seed, we were able to quickly spin a yarn about a world darkened by a rainy season that drenched more than just the soil. These processes so far took about 90 minutes, but I expect with a less experienced GM , it would often take a bit longer. That being said, unlike many session zeros, it was engaging enough to feel like a true part of the game rather than a chore one has to do to simple start the game.

Once formal role play started we were introduced to the final two tenets that make this world shine. In another upheaval to the status quo we would be playing a game that I would like to call GMless-ish. Often when playing GMless games, we would need to consult a table or otherwise be called to balance our own interest and the interests of NPCs. While I haven't’ yet played a game that is GMless that has combat, I can only assume those can be quite difficult to balance. Instead in this game we can each act as the world our characters are in, and the narrative friction that is needed for the fiction to have meaning. Our “GM” was great at helping us transition from the more passive player role to a true collaborative performer. 

The final conceit of the game, that makes it different than the vast majority of games I have played, is of course the way to resolve when our players may not get what they want. Without appropriate  resistance the narrative would fall flat. Instead it is up to each player to in a sense, get in their own way, or at least be okay when someone else does it. This is a game that does not have dice. Instead a character earns tokens, in a variety of ways, but the most likely trigger is when they make decision that get in the way of their own goals. This is where Wanderhome will either rewire your mind for how stories can be told at the table or completely fall flat. When you earn those tokens, you can simply succeed against all odds later in the session. You get to decided when you get tokens, and when you would spend them. The reasons to gain them, aren’t just having your character sacrifice for the greater good, and to spend them isn’t just to “win” the encounter, but at its core it helps you balance the moments that tell a good story. Your character often is rewarded for growth, participation, and generally diving in heart first into the tale. If you are still playing with the mindset of efficiency or even just completion you aren’t likely to find the soul of this game. It is for that very reason I would suggest working this into your game nights. This game will not be for everyone, but I think many players won’t know that this is something they have not only been missing but have been dying for.  So its pretty obvious I would recommend this game, as I would any game I ever take the time to review. At this point though I want to start a trend with these articles to help sum up the games, and talk about the tools they present us. Not mention previously there are some wonderful safety tools that help contextualize them not as limitations to a narrative but also a tool to push them forward. These are the most literally tool you can take from this game, but there are plenty of others. The world building prompts are great even if you aren’t going to be playing a game of Wanderhome. Also I feel if you are gearing up for a big long campaign of something heavy or even are coming off of one, this could be both a great creative warm up or emotional cool down. Finally I have to ask myself, and in doing so help give you one last piece of context that could help you decade if this game is for you, how I would use Wanderhome. While I am not entirely enamored with the all animal setting as whole, and it would be a poor fit for some of my gaming tables, I have an “Oops All Familiars” Campaign idea that we accidently created during a Game of Kids on Bikes, that happens on a different sub plane of the main games reality that would work very well for Wanderhome, so I do expect this to hit the table at some point.

[rpgbot]

How to Play PF2 - New "Spellcasting" Section

I started writing an article series on how to play Pathfinder 2e a couple years ago, then shelved it part-way through when Paizo announced the remaster effort, and haven't gotten back to it. But, after a long time away, RPGBOT contributor Ash Ely is picking up where I left off! Ash dug into the spellcasting mechanics, and explains the differences between prepared and spontaneous casters in simple, approachable terms.

[atiny-for-life]

Xikers Full Storyline Explained - Part 5

Masterlist

DO or DIE

While this MV doesn't move the storyline forward (which is likely due to Junghoon's absence at the time), we can still take a little look at its plot and keep in mind that TRICKY likes to put Xikers into video-game-like scenarios for the fun of it (think Bittersweet but this time within TRICKY's own realm)

We begin with a shot of an old tube TV with an integrated cassette player

Note the 'Xikers' and 'Do or Die' tape, as well as the blue-and-yellow background (the latter will be noteworthy in a second)

We zoom in on the screen as it switches on and displays the main menu of a little game called "The Adventures of Xikers: Zombieland"

A little pixelated red and black van comes flying at us as we select "Play" and cut to the Mission screen which announces: "Mission: Capture zombie's heart"

From there, we cut to the interior of (presumably the before seen) van where we find ourselves in the company of Xikers themselves

However, we're also quit to cut to another version of Xikers who're lounging on a couch and cushions in front of a familiar yellow-and-blue wall

It's now conveniently already been established that we've got both the in-game and real-life versions of them and we'll be cutting back and forth between the two throughout the duration of the MV

Their in-game versions roll up to a zombie-infested street with their weapons already in hand, kicking off their mission

(It's here where I'd like to point out the super extravagant outfits they're wearing which tell us that their real-life counterparts spent a ridiculous amount of time in the character creation section just to put as much random extra items on their avatars as possible)

Now at the starting point of the game, their in-game selves are quick to knock out a couple of zombies in a row, swinging bats and pipes to lay them out flat and stand threateningly over them

And by threateningly, I mean adorably

We've got Yujun hopping onto the roof of a car, while Jinsik, Yechan and Seeun push along a zombie whom they've placed on a hospital gurney

Meanwhile, Sumin has made himself at home in the back of a van stacked full of boxes labeled "xikers" which he then exits to show off its exterior (there, we can then also see the van company's motto: "We blow up everywhere" - a line from the song)

The members then gather around the gurney and begin to fasten electrodes to the zombie's chest, place headphones over his ears and inject him with an unknown substance (something tells me these kids don't have a medical license)

They then proceed to dump him in a wheelchair and push him along the street until they've reached the stage built at its end

Xikers take the stage and begin to perform as the zombies flock around the parked cars they'll sometimes be jumping onto

Some of the already treated zombies then also join in on the jamming as a drummer and guitarists respectively

As we move into vers two, we return to the real-life versions of xikers who, for now, stop playing and roam around the store they've been chilling in

The little "Tricky" video rental place is very much reminiscent of the Blockbuster stores found around the US from the mid-80s up until a decade or ago

This then raises the question what the fuck these kids are doing in there and why they're not being supervised by an older adult

Do Yechan's parents own the place? Did they start a business themselves at such a young age? Does one of them live in a house that has a fake video rental store in its basement for some reason? Guess we'll never know.

Either way, they return to the game after a bit and have Junmin absolutely obliterate half the earth for the sake of going full Happy Gilmore on an innocent golf ball

They then jam out with the zombies some more until they've fully converted them with the power of music and performance, at which point they join in on the dancing and fireworks explode in the sky, declaring the mission was successfully cleared which marks the closely followed end of the MV

[donnisbutterfly]

Intro to UDC

Hey there everyone I hope you enjoyed Episode 1/Day 1 of the Native American UDC. I realize some of you haven't played or even watched any Ultimate Decades Challenges so here I will explain the rules and everything UDC! If you love history and spreadsheets, you'll know more about both at the end of this challenge! Here's some more info below: 

 Creator of Ultimate Decades Challenge/ How to Start:   • HOW TO PLAY THE ULTIMATE DECADES CHAL...   

 Please like, subscribe, comment and share! Created with Movavi Video Suite 

#ts4 #thesims4 #udc #ultimatedecadeschallenge #thesims4ultimatedecadeschallenge #nativeamerican #1300s

[eflen-n-reegee]

Inspired by @chompchompchu’s How to Play series. Suggested by Anon - here’s the original How to Play Vampire post if you’re interested!

Refer to your Capri Suns as “blood bags” and pretend to bite them when you stick the straw in.

(On the other hand, if you don’t like juice, make your own “blood” by mixing water and red food dye!)

Stay out of the sunlight! Hiss a windows and dramatically avoid the sunbeams on the ground. Wear sun hats if you have to go outside.

Bite chewy toys - or people! (Gently!)

Try to hypnotize others with your intense stare. (If that doesn’t work, try puppy eyes.)

Stay up super late playing. Bedtimes are for mortals!

Hide from mirrors. You can’t let anyone see your lack of reflection!

Draw bats on your fingers and then pretend to explode into a swarm of bats.

[jerimee]

sorry

[fogaminghub]

✨ Explore Infinity Nikki with the "Purify Scent in Cavern" quest! 🌿 Begin your adventure in Florawish, prove your skills to Eremita, and uncover the secrets of the cavern! Craft your very own Whim Fragrances and reap fantastic rewards!

Dive into our detailed guide for all the steps you need! 🎮💖 

[momoksha]

Happy holidays, everyone!🎄🎶✨

This is a piano cover / how to play ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ on the Piano!🎹🎁 I guess this is one of the most simplified versions of the song!You can do it!🎅❄️💕 (x)