#break!!

[prokopetz]

I really appreciate how effectively the Break!! Kickstarter is flying in the face of conventional wisdom about small-press tabletop RPG crowdfunding. Everybody "knows" you need a complex reward structure and extravagant value-added stretch goals and fancy merchandisable add-ons that have nothing to do with the game's core experience in order to draw people in, and then there's Break!! with no stretch goals, no add ons, and a reward structure that's literally just "the PDF", "the printed book", and "the printed book with a different, Kickstarter-exclusive cover for the folks who are into the whole patronage thing", and it's doing bigger numbers than fucking Exalted.

[break-rpg]

The printers sent us pictures of the very first copy of the book!

[literalcatpod]

This Month on the Literal Cat Podcast (09.2024)

Hey guys! Hope you liked Herding Cats Pt. 2! That's just the beginning of what we have to offer this month! Check it out!

On September 4, we've got a 2-for-1 special! Monsters and Other Childish Things by Arc Dream Publishing lets us give you more cat per cat! Special Thanks to @jackfrostdoll for joining us this episode!

Then, on September 18, we make a cat in the newly-released Break!! RPG! Luckily, @break-rpg made it easy for us with a convenient freebie! (they also made the rest of the game but we know why you're all here)

[antidiluvianobservatory]

So as promised in this post, I thought I'd run a game of Break!! where polls decide the action. The first few polls will be 24 hours only and will decide the setting and character for our adventure. The rest will be week-long polls to give me a chance to write the story. If anyone wants to contribute, please feel free to comment or send me an ask or dm. I'll tag all posts related to this as #playing break!! Some notes before we begin:

This is just for fun. No negativity please.

The story will follow one central protagonist controlled by the polls, though NPCs will be present.

I'll gloss over and condense the literal rules since this is a longform story rather than a ttrpg session. In other words, I'll not be polling for individual actions in combat, etc.

The whole thing will be set within the world of Break!! and I'll stick as close to official stuff as possible. Following the wishes of the creators, I won't be posting any actual rules text or artwork (the above banner being a fan creation), but if you're interested please look the game up and support it if you can.

Quick lore drop so this poll makes sense, the world of Break!! (called The Outer World) is artificial and once had an enormous artificial sun called the Sun Machine orbiting it. At the end of the last Aeon, the Sun Machine was shattered, which has left half the planet in permanent darkness and half in permanent light.

[time--immemorial]

Both versions of @break-rpg I received yesterday are gorgeous

I love the edges of the paper and look forward to fighting my group to learn a new system.

[mythratica]

reading Break!! to potentially play a game of it and im rlly enjoying it. this is like what people think d&d 5e is

[myfirstbreakcharacter]

I enjoy the Histories in BREAK!! being a mix of lifestyles. The last edition of D&D is probably the game most people have played that involved some kind of history/background mechanic, although I think we can all name some games where that's a much bigger factor. I think something that got missed in the way people treated those was that the initial PHB offerings were effectively all reasons one might travel. Even the Hermit: they lived a secluded live, discovered some secret or insight, and are out in the world now spreading that around. Over time this remained mostly true even if the became more tied to specific careers and experiences, a mix of superhero origin story and CV. In a world where you're constantly beset by giant beasts, ghoulies, magic monsters etc, the average NPC leads their life in one place.... content with their lot and awaiting a wandering party to fix their problems. When the world is wild, civilization is small. BREAK!!, on the other hand, is not terribly wild at all. There are places OF wildness, and places where time has gouged deep wounds into the world, but the world is largely known and "mapped" such that there are few places to leave blank for "here be dragons." Indeed, BREAK!!'s map indicates explicitly where there WERE dragons... What great nations and city-states exist do so with something approaching a modern awareness of one another that recalls at least the European colonial era if not late Victorian explorer accounts. Folks in Berry Town may have heard that the junkers of Stahlfield eat babies but they know where they are and what their overall deal is apart from those rumors, at least. One scholar of ancient culture I read in college had a definition of civilization as the point where a shared language is adopted, and since Low Speech is baked into the Outer World and spoken by all sapient things one could argue for BREAK!! being among the most civilized and connected fantasy settings on the market....

The Histories on offer do have some typical genre conventions (e.g. Knight Errant, Street Rat) but they're typically very specific and very tied to the demands and expectations of their associated regions. Some denote training, some denote upbringing, and some denote circumstances, but whereas I think a lot of D&D5's Background were designed from the perspective of "Why have you found yourself on the road in an adventuring party?" as if being "an adventurer" is something you can just fall into, BREAK!!'s Histories seem more designed around what your character would be doing if they weren't ON AN ADVENTURE. Tom Hanks used to be a teacher in Saving Private Ryan and that does inform his character and his behavior when you know that, but it's wildly different from how everyone in his command pictures him. He's on an adventure because of a convergence of unique circumstances, some of which arose our of necessity and some of which seem almost contrived against him. He's going to go back there some day, just like Gonzo the Great. There are others in his company who feel differently, who can't wait to leave their old life behind and use the money and experience from their military service as a launchpad into something new, something better than the circumstances they left behind.

That's because the Histories in BREAK!! represent a choice. There are some folks bopping around doing good deeds because it's what they've run towards, and there are others for whom these wonders and horrors are only something to run THROUGH. Sometimes the choices are easier than others: someone devoted to "vanquishing all evil" after a life of pious service will find being a vagabond savior a smooth, imperceptible transition. A merchant or craftsman might easily find opportunities to ply their trade during travels, or might commit to this new way of life precisely because of the opportunities it affords them for when they elect to walk away. That's life, though: depending upon our circumstances and resources, some lifestyles might make some choices easier or much much harder depending on the person.

But it is a choice. That's why they're Histories and not Backgrounds. Do you long for the Shire and wish you'd never left, or do you embrace the riches and spectacle that you've found walking man's road: your past or your present? Known or unknown? You have to reconcile it somehow to have any future worth speaking about at all.

[unseenphil]

Reading the Break!! beta pdf...

and I've come to the realization that despite everyone talking about it being used for JRPGs it really is an excellent system for doing 1980s fantasy cartoons. The sage isn't a JRPG wizard, they're...Orko or presto, the weirdo who spells mostly just solve problems obliquely or cause potentially bigger problems.

Thundarr is a battle princess. I will not be taking questions on this.

[ratking-lyrr]

This is the rai-neko clerk of the Top Shelf Cat Hotel and Venture League, in my Break RPG game. They often get comments about looking familiar, but really they've just got one of those faces. They introduce new adventurers and parties to the league and curate all the quests!

[frisiunia]

Break

I just wanted to say this out loud - I'm having a break. Summer holidays are ending and I didn't finish drawing everything but screw it! I want to relax at these last days and come back to work later... even though I'm going to have even more work to do when school year starts...

I think I'm going to start drawing Sans, Papyrus or Undyne. I have Cameron, Jayden and Cora first in my list but I don't have to stick to the order I set myself. Especially since I still need to work on Cameron and Jayden's designs. And I still want to make progress.

I'm sorry for the delay. Even when I really try to be productive, I'm failing at this recently. Guess I'm also a little burnt out. So I think deciding to take a break in the last days of summer holidays is a good decision.

[prokopetz]

I have very little to say about Break!! that hasn't been said elsewhere, other than to observe that if you're the sort who sees a character class called "Murder Princess" and picks it purely on the strength that it's called "Murder Princess", this game will probably interest you, because it has a character class called "Murder Princess".

[break-rpg]

Ennies Voting is up!

If you would like to vote for BREAK!! for an Ennie award, the links to our nominated categories are below:

Best Family Game:

https://t.co/GkO5ngfsAd

Best Layout & Design:

https://t.co/6vjjijYkbM

Thank you for your support!

[not-this-crude-matter]

Yooooo Break!! RPG final PDF is out for backers! Check your email, loves

[antidiluvianobservatory]

Let's play Break!! Master Post

This is the master post for my Break!! adventure in which Tumblr decides the action! This post will contain details of our hero, links to the various posts and other such useful information. I'll try to keep it up to date, updating it with each new post.

What is this?

I'll be running a game of Break!! with a difference. Instead of me GMing for a party of adventurers each controlled by a single person, I'll GM for one character controlled by Tumblr via polls. Right now, we're currently creating a hero, so each poll will be 24 hours so we can get to the action faster. Once we have our hero, the polls will switch to being one week long, so that I have a chance to write the story. I've not voted in any of the polls during character creation and don't plan to, so the character will be a surprise to me. When we get to the action, I'll vote on it towards the end so I can keep start writing the next story. Woe to me if it switches between that vote and the end.

I am not one of the creators of Break!!, I'm just a fan who likes GMing who saw a cool idea and decided to try my own. Unless they've seen one of these posts, I don't think the creators are even aware I'm doing this. If you like what you see or you want to know more about Break!! please support it if you can. I'll stick to official material as much as I can, though this game is very homebrew-friendly. To comply with the creators' wishes, I'll not be posting any official artwork or rules text. The banner above is a fan creation.

Link to Character Bio

Current Location

Twilight Meridian (Permanent twilight, filled with forgotten technology)

Links to past polls

Choose the starting location (Twilight Meridian)

Choose our Calling (Murder Princess)

Choose our Species (Rai-neko)

Choose our Background (Shadow Sea Pirate)

Choose our Quirk (Dread Orator)

Chapter 1: Shipwrecked in Stahlfield

1 (Poll ongoing)

[dragonwithgoggles]

Break!! is in the last few hours of its Kickstarter!! It looks awesome! Check it out if you like! :D