#anim-ttrpgs

[20clawzstudios]

Thanks for the response and the immense level of detail! It isn't easy to design games in the first place, let alone release them. Seeing y'all's advice is great, and it also points to a few points I myself overlooked and am 100% going to have to include in the panel.

Social Media

Social Media, as much as it sometimes can be difficult, is indeed one of the best ways to get a game out there. I think going in depth onit is also enough of something for its own hour panel, but not including it would really be an oversight on my part for those who want to sell what they make, or have others see it.

Paywalling and Cost of Games

The insight on not paywalling is something I already included too, but I just want to double down on what you said here. Indie TTRPGs don't really have the luxury of being high cost most of the time, and certainly don't have the luxury of being required payment to have. At least digitally. IF indie TTRPGs are going to expand, they need to be accessible in cost and trust folks to pay if they can when they can.

Starting small and the size of games

While the smallest section, I am also happy you included actual figures on size. It's hard to tell people "make something small" because I often see the response to that being a one page ttrpg. Which themselves are effectively Game Design Challenges. They are NOT easy, and require lots of work to still communicate ideas well (which even then, rely on assumptions). Many new ttrpg designers (myself included, unfortunately) want to make our Big Thing, and that isn't usually feasible. While I am all for Make It If You Must, you should still TRY to make something smaller if you can.

Designing with Intent/Play and Read TTRPGs (and not just copying or spiting media)

A lot of my panel is going to be "Do what I say, not what I did" and this one is... very true. Painfully true, really. To add though, I want to point out that rules matter, and that means every rule added should be in service of a main design goal or mantra. From the small addendums to the massive backbones of the system like what dice should be used.

For Shattered Neon, the big gripe I'm going to be discussing and my cardinal mistake was this. I'd say about 70% of Shattered Neon is built for the purpose of making a tactical cyberpunk-fantasy TTRPG. The other 30% has been there... well, largely because of my initial goal of "Make Shadowrun, but actually playable and fun to learn". That could be a goal, but in reality it is simply a comparison. It also showcases how, while I like the genre and had a lot of movies and shows at my back, I didn't read enough TTRPGs early on in the genre to really make educated choices. Something more obtainable that would make a good end result would be something like "Make a horror ttrpg that explains the trans experience in governmental work" (my next project) or "Make a party game about a solarpunk library after the bombs fell" or whatever. The big point however is none of those are tied to one system or inspirational media. They have legs to stand on and whole genres to pull from. They also have clear and executable "fantasies" to create. But that is a whole other addendum.

Playtesting and Feedback

Feedback is important, playtesting is important. That much is obvious and I already included it (as well as the many ways to playtest things and get playtesters) but I hadn't thought of making the point you made. Feedback isn't always useful, and it isn't always something that should be listened to. Don't just kowtow to playtesters and fans. Look into what you can use for your art first and foremost.

(also I just realized I responded on the studio page and asked on the personal. Woops! Oh well.)

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.

[onion-souls]

Listened into the Eureka! ttrpg playtest tonight. They went through a starter module set in an escape room set-up, and the game went unusually smoothly. The system did what it needed to do and stepped out of the way, which is great for an investigation system. @anim-ttrpgs

[sticksandsharks]

Fangs, Steel and Stolen Honour

Illustrations for one of the new SCURRY! adventures from Stout Stoat Press, now available on backerkit! If you ever wanted to play as a little woodland animal getting into big, big trouble, I highly reccommend this system and these stories!

[gnarlyghost]

Programming update

[archpaladin]

And of course there are games out there that take the drow and deconstruct them to take them wild places, whether that deconstruction is serious like with Spire: The City Must Fall (and also technically its sister game, Heart: The City Beneath, but drow aren't by default front-and-center in that one and it explores different themes and ideas) or silly like Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG (still in alpha at the moment)!

Yet another Monsters Reimagined ask- this anon would love to have your take on drow! Both the breakdowns of what’s a problem and the retention of what makes particular monster-folk interesting have been really good!

Monsters Reimagined: Drow

It's no big surprise that drow would end up being a popular request for monsters reimagined, as they're one of the most common "enemy" creatures for the fandom to try and rehabilitate, with this campaign going all the way back to the late 80s.

It's fascinating to watch this change happen in slow motion, as the rogue drow Drizzt spawned so many imitators within the fandom that it actually ended up with the writers specifically creating a goddess for " rebel drow that have decided to turn good." The drow in the Eberron setting ditched their evil spider cultist statist for being tribalistic scorpion worshipers instead (we'll get into the spider thing later), and right now the biggest most popular drow in the fandom is a hot-boi gravity wizard from an empire culturally focused on reincarnation, a far cry from the slavers of old.

WoTC has even gotten involved in the last couple years, making elves capable of shifting their physical sex at will, and using that as a springboard for a lot of interesting worldbuilding regarding the previously gender essentialist nature of the drow.

That said, there’s still a lot to unpack about the drow, and while different cultural templates now exist, there’s plenty more left to be explored. which I’ll do under the “read more” link. 

TLDR: If you want drow to occupy the space of antagonists, ditch the spider cultist nonsense and model them after the roman empire: a socially rigid society that’s merciless to it’s foes but exalts the rights of its citizens. This lets you keep most of the drow badguy things ( slavery and human sacrifice) while not having them motivated purely by evil. 

Alternatively, paint them as the counterpart to the fey-loving woodelves, and align them with the unseelie court: tricksters and riders of the wild hunt, 

What’s wrong: Like a lot of other things from early d&d, the drow as they exist have a lot less to do with any fantastical roots and more with whatever pulp adventure magazines the original creators happened to be reading. Specifically s/m dominatrix archetypes, the “ planet of women” trope, mixed in with just a dash of “journey to the center of the earth” exploration for flavor.  Much like the pulp archetypes they’re based off of, the drow are custom built to both indulge in that original male audiences’ prurient sexual interest while also attacking their insecurities. 

To engage in some laughably shallow psychosexual analysis: 

Drow are FAMOUS for being slavers, launching raids specifically for captives from the surface world. The idea of the heroes being reduced to chattel and “broken” feeds into a larger fear of being “unmanned”, of ripped from your rightful place in the hierarchy. 

The matriarchy is likewise meant to be alienating, since these evil women are supposed to be “unrelatable” it creates an entire society where the only way a man can advance is by objectifying himself in a way that he’d traditionally do to women in his own life. 

While the drow matriarchy is explicitly presented as cruel and exploitative, the assumed patriarchal authority of every other civilization ( monstrous or otherwise) is never questioned. The fact that their society is female dominant is one of their monstrous characteristics, evidenced by the fact that none of the player ancestries have such an assumption. 

Drow fight with debilitating poison, ranged weapons, and restraints, negating the inherent strength advantage that the male heroes would have over their female captors ( seriously, look it up). 

Their entire culture is built around the worship a black widow spider goddess and if that doesn’t shine a light on just the sort of Freudian anxieties that sit at the core of the default drow, I don’t know what will. 

  I think it’s also worth noting just how sexualized the drow are. It’s not a coincidence that they’re the only female led “enemy” faction, and also happen to be the only pretty ones out of the whole rogue’s gallery, AND be the ones who happen to have a society based around a bad understanding of BDSM dynamics. 

What’s worth saving:  Personally I think it’s worth leaning into the mythological roots of drow being “ dark elves”, relating them back to the aos si or the unseelie court; lords and tricksters who live under hills and in caves, and come out on darkened nights to hunt, and revel and strike deals. Treating them as you would woodelves, save for strange landscapes, or the echoing halls of the underdark fixes 90% of the problems with default drow culture.  These elves would deal in the wonderous riches of the world below, and treat the lives of . Hell, if you wanted to tap into some pop mythology: having a version of Hades and Persephone as darkelf patron gods would be a perfect thematic fit.  

If you wished to include antagonistic drow that perform the same actions as their monster manual counter parts, I’d advise: a) treating lolth and her spider worshipers as you would any other sinister cult, including spreading their membership to other races b) looking to the model of historical civilizations that also engaged in sacrifice and slaver raids, I’d in particular suggest Rome, in no small part because it fits in with the default drow’s whole ego/politics/poison/ hedonism VIBE without being exploitative. 

While I could go on a full rant about the hypocrisies of d&d painting its monsters humanoids as slavers while at the same time excusing feudalism ( news flash, just because you call it selfdom doesn’t mean it’s not slavery), if you DO want to include the grim reality of slavery into your campaign, I’d recommend having a good long worldbuildig session regarding it. Slavery is evil, and just about every civilization has engaged in it in one form or another. Acknowledging that the culture that your party fights for might be guilty of it to some degree is one of the unpleasant tasks we need to do when breaking from the “always chaotic evil” model of things. 

  Art

Also as a side note I wanted to just offhandedly mention how hard it was to find art for this post. When it comes to the "problematic enemy" forms of monsters reimagined, I try to find pictures that show the people in question just chilling, going about their lives. Sadly most pictures of drow "at rest" tend to be either spider themed or undeniably horny

[osatokun]

New prices! Will be very grateful for your support!

All other types can be seen here

[cinderoo]

[bregflr]

Efficiency

the caliban is pretty fucked, and so is ISP N for making it, and I made this piece based on like, how this shit would look like, just brutality against ship crew slightly more efficiently than normal

[canonkiller]

world's most normal animals

(if you want to use my concepts in your ttrpg campaigns you should 1. ask me 2. update me on events like a little podcast 3. give me money about it. I also take commissions once my queue is cleared!)

[fedeath]

New Lancer commission! This time a custom SSC Blackwitch designed by me! this was a lot of fun, trying more mech design, hope you enjoy this one!

I have some commission slots OPEN so send me a DM if you are interested! i'm ready for more mecha greatness

As always all shares are welcome! and you can follow me on my other sites in the link on my bio!

[90sfantasyanimestuff]

Runal Saga, TTRPG

[the-haiku-bot]

tumblr user: you’ve

been blessed by Athena to

protect you from.. 🤢men🤢

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

I can't wait to hear about a party implosion in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy where a gorgon PC swallows or petrifies all the others after an argument about tumblr Greek myth retelling.

[the-fluffy-folio]

Wizard – Tiny monstrosity, unaligned

An arcane anomaly is what they described the wizard to be; a rejected experiment; nothing more to worry about they said – after all, it is just a lizard, they so naively thought. Shortly after, the streets of Falbheim were shattered by spells that were exclusively known to the well-read and most exalted scholars of wizardry. With all of the city’s magical stores, arcane schools as well as magically gifted resident, the wizard found a perfect place to live, to feed and thrive.

🔮 If you like my work, kindly consider to support me on Patreon to gain access to monster pages, tokens & artwork of over 300 quirky creatures as well as dozens of potion & item cards based on their lore.

[dungeon-strugglers]

✨New item!✨ Bandolier of Many Knives Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)

This leather bandolier has eight daggers sheathed in it. You have a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with one of these magic daggers. A dagger removed (or thrown) from the bandolier vanishes at the end of your turn and reappears on the bandolier, unless you are wielding the dagger as a melee weapon. You can draw a dagger from the bandolier (no action required) as part of making an attack with it.

Fan of Blades. As an action while wearing the bandolier, you can throw all eight daggers at once. You must have a free hand to do so. Each creature in a 15-foot cone must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw. A creature takes 8d4 + 8 piercing damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. Once this property of the bandolier has been used, it cannot be used again until the next dawn.

An engraving on the inside of the bandolier reads: “A knife for each of your problems.” - 🖌🎨 Like our work? Consider supporting us on Patreon and gain access to the hi-resolution art for over 200 magic items, printable item cards and card packs, beautiful creature art and stat blocks, and setting pdfs with narrative hooks and unique lore!🧙‍♂️ Thank you so much for your support! 💖

📜 Credit. Art and design by us: the Dungeon Strugglers. Please credit us if you repost elsewhere.

[gnarlyghost]

CYBERMIDRIFF

[heybiji]