#i need generally rpg recs.

[sylviagirlie]

i would kill for a town-set rpg honestly

[theresattrpgforthat]

Do ya'll have any recs for school/slice of life ttrpgs with more in depth mechanics for grades, classes, and keeping a school life balance? We really like magic school and slice of life settings but very few ttrpgs we've found have any actual mechanics for the school side of things, rather than just flavor for the free-time portions. Any kinda school works. Thank you!

THEME: Slice of Life Schools

Hello there! I found more games that were closer to this request than I thought, but there's definitely a number that I'd say come with a Your Mileage May Vary caveat. I hope you still find something that works for you!

Academia Or Else!, by liberigothica.

You are students at a local school. Your grade and age do not matter. What does matter is you have no choice. You must go to your classes every weekday, for 8 hours, unless you are sick. But that doesn't mean you must do as you're told.

Academia Or Else is a one page tabletop RPG about playing as a group of students in school, dealing with day to day school troubles like finding a mysterious envelope full of money, or finding the principle's diary, or being sent to detention for one of those first two things.

Academia or Else is grounded in the mundane pieces of school life: bullies, tests, detention, and school events. Your characters are classified as a Goth, Jock, Nerd or Prep, and your skills are represented as letter grades in common classes (Gym, History, Language, Math, and Science). This is a game more about rebelling against some of the rules of academia than it is fitting in, and the game in general gives me some of the same vibes as Breakfast Club.

When it comes to rolling dice, your skills and archetypes are represented by different sided dice: a d10 for an A-level, l, a D4 for an F-level, and so on and so forth. You roll two dice for any given problem, one for your archetype and one for your skills. You are trying to gain a total of 4 or higher on each dice. This means that there are three possible results: success, success with a penalty, and a total penalty. If you want a game that’s quick to learn, you might like this game.

Brit School Hijinks, by Librarians and Leviathans.

You're pupils at a British secondary school, trying to keep life at least a bit interesting and make your own entertainment. Build a den in the rafters of the gym. Raise terrapins in the third-floor bathroom. Brew moonshine with the long-banned solvents in the arts room. Arrange charity concerts. Steal test answers from the Head's safe while disguised as a Swedish piano-tuner. Stage a rebellion against school dinners. Find buried treasure under the rugby pitch. Arrest your physics teacher as a spy. Hide sickly aliens in the lockers. Plot bank robberies. Concoct elaborate schemes to bump into your crush. Bend, not break, the rules. Try different ways to make a difference to the days.

Much of the creation of the school in Brit School Hijinks does a very good job of reminding you that this is a run-of-the-mill school, with problems like needing to borrow money for something important, humorous misunderstandings with your crush, or setting up an elaborate scheme at school to get out of one of your classes. There doesn't need to be magic, monsters, or big world-ending event (although there can be if you want it). As a group, you’ll also decide whether your teachers are hostile, mundane, forgiving, or something else, as well as where you school gets its funding, and what kinds of programs it focuses on. There’s also a quick primer on British high schools in general, for folks who are unfamiliar with what that kind of school life looks like.

When it comes to how the game is run, there’s a focus on your relationships with each-other. How much do your peers trust you? Do the adults approve of you? How cool do other students think you are? You’ll also have a number of skills related to academic classes, which you’ll use when consulting how many dice you can roll for different tasks. From the role-play side of things, your characters also come with motivations - maybe they need to pass chemistry, or they want to ask out their crush. I think there’s the opportunity to make this game very fantastical, but you certainly don’t have to.

Dusk Academy, by Skullery Maids.

Dusk Academy is a spinoff of Blades in the Dark. It uses much of the same systems and mechanics, deviating slightly to fit the setting.

It is set in the hallowed halls of, well, Dusk Academy — a private school on an English island, far away from society. This school caters to girls fresh out of school, unsure of what to do in their futures. Dusk Academy helps these girls sort out their interests and passions, but it is special in its own way. The school is home to magic — and teaches it as part of its curriculum. This fact must remain secret from the rest of the world, but the school aims to provide a healthy environment for students to unleash their mystical potential.

More importantly, the school encourages students to form clubs, to provide a support network of friends throughout their time there. From sports to calligraphy, the world is your oyster.

Forged in the Dark games are very very good at providing you with tools to help you track long term consequences, typically in the form of clocks. You can use clocks to track how close you are to finishing a school project, how much time you have left to study, how long before the school dance, how much stress you’re under, and how far you can push a teacher before they blow their top.

Dusk Academy also uses the faction mechanic from original blades and re-skins them as clubs, creating the clique-ish social organization of a school hierarchy. The phases of the game also map out to the different parts of a school week - lessons during the week, club activities on Wednesdays, free play in the evenings, and extra downtime over the weekends.

If you like working with a bunch of different systems that synchronize kind of like clockwork - then you might want to check out Dusk Academy.

Alchemical Romance, by TrueFeyQueen888.

Alchemical Romance is a TTRPG powered by Caltrop Core. It is a game about young love, teen angst, lo-fi study groups, alchemy, friendship, and magic. Alchemical Romance is about a group of young alchemists getting together to study for their Alchemy Finals, but it is also about what goes on behind the scenes. Alchemical Romance is a game of unexpected friends and being true to yourself.

The characters in Alchemical Romance are different school tropes, such as Athlete, Bookworm, Goth, and Headphones Kid. Part of the game will revolve around maintaining relationships with your classmates, but the other part is focused on preparing for your Alchemy final. The game can be played in a single session “Study Sesh”, a multiple-campaign“Diploma” series, or somewhere in between. There’s a couple of neat tools in here to play around with, including a Burnout track to help you monitor how much stress your character is under, and both relationships and special skills to track how what resources your character has.

Overall the game is rather rules-lite: this is a game for folks who really like social roleplay, first and foremost. I think that it definitely fits the “slice of life” part of your request, but if you pick up Alchemical Romance for your group, you’ll probably want to be putting a number of other rules in to make the game feel more like an engine.

Last Hope, by Wendigo Workshop.

“There is a world, much like our own, where darkness lives. Its influence seeps into our world, corrupting those with a weak soul. That is why The Gift exists. Those with The Gift must travel to The Beyond and free the world from Shadows. But The Gift always comes with a price…

We never know the price, it is never said… we always understand too late. Do not accept The Gift. It is tempting, it seems beautiful, but when something appears too good to be true, it usually is…”Last Hope is a tabletop roleplaying game within which you play as a teenage character trying to fight evil corruption in an alternate version of the world, while also living your daily life as a student. Through a strange contract, you were given The Gift, transforming you into a Magical girl and giving you special powers.

As magical girls, you’ll be juggling school in between missions during a session of Last Hope. However, there are rules in this game for tracking a school day, as well as a roll table to determine whether or not you can stay awake in class, or pass your exams. There’s also downtime rules, which includes taking time out of your precious free hours to work on your schoolwork - rewarding you with a better chance of succeeding at Wit rolls. Since Last Hope is also Caltrop Core, I’m curious as to whether or not you could take a few pieces of this game and combine them with Alchemical Romance to make a more robust game.

Public Wizard High School Teens, by Rexatron Games.

It’s senior year at Wolfboil High… 

A public high school for urban and suburban kids who want to do wizard stuff but can’t afford the snooty private school up the hill, on the lake, in the woods. As usual, yet another life-threatening problem has emerged that the highly qualified and experienced (but apathetic) adult staff of wizards is ill equipped to deal with. That leaves you, a scrappy band of dramatic libidinous teenagers to save the day. But there’s also crazy important school stuff to think about AND your life sucks hard because you have your own even more important problems to deal with.

This is a one-page rpg with two different sets of rules, so you can choose which set works best for you. The premise of the game is that there is a villain with an evil plan, but even as your students are trying to stop them, they’ll also have to deal with personal stress and a big event coming up - an event, that if cancelled, could severely effect the staff and/or students of the school. It’s a small inclusion, but the constant reminder of a normal part of school life that your characters care about is a nice reminder that this is in fact, a school.

You Can Also Check Out…

My Spooky Dark Boarding School Recommendation post has a lot of games in it that fit this request to some extent, in particular Precarious Prep and St. Hornbeck’s.

[rpgchoices]

Useless rpg recs. RPGS where you can have a d/s (bdsm-ajacent) romance

(I say "adjacent" as many of these videogame romances do not follow the rule of safe, sane and - sometimes - consensual)

Under cut for themes of sexual nature and spoilers:

Baldur's Gate 3: Lae'zel and Astarion fit in the adjacent category. Lae'zel's romance starts with some play on the dominant/follower roles between her and the player. Astarion in his ascended ending has some questionable romance choices that end up with him in a position of power (total power) over the player.

Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous: This game has two romances that are adjacent to d/s even if nothing healthy to look at here! Thanks to @scorpiuscircuss and @meishuu for reminding me that Wenduag romance has a touch of d/s. She can be romanced by any gender and will consider the player characters as her superior, someone to obey given they are stronger than her. She has quite a sweet romance all things considered! The other (with caution) is Sosiel - I haven't played it so consider it a question mark between how much unhealthy d/s it is vs how much it's just an abusive relationship.

Rogue Trader: This game has a romance that will allow you to take a dominant role or a submissive role, and the romance will have a happy ending as long as you do not change the role mid-game. Marazhai can be romanced by both genders and his romance is a violent, bloody mess. He is a Drukhari and love is seen as possession and domination - so dominate him away! (or submit to him). The dom romance is a bit bugged but I wrote everything here.

Dragon Age Inquisition: The Iron Bull probably needs no introduction. A part from one particular ending for him, his romance is absolutely wholesome and even introduces safewords. The player will always take the submissive role in this case.

Pathfinder Kingmaker: Regongar and Octavia are less in the existential-adjacent role and more in the playful and fun (with a touch of angst) masochist (Regongar) and dominant (Octavia) role. In general, a player who romances them both or romances Regongar can take a dominant role. While there are no safewords involved, and Regongar and Octavia do use their roles to cope with their past, in general most of the romance is definitely on the safe side with enthutisastic consent.

[fanonical]

do you have any recs for a non d&d ttrpg system? especially ones that are good for a one shot (i want to gm a game for my parents who have never played any ttrpg). or if you just wanna talk about your favorite ttrpgs, i don’t have a lot of knowledge of any besides d&d and like hearing about other people’s games

So my go-to for one-shot ttrpgs is using one-page rpgs, because they're quick to pick up and easy to use for people who either are new to playing ttrpgs in general or wouldn't want to pick up a Whole New System just for one session

I always use some variety of Lasers and Feelings, personally - easy to use, only needs 3d6 per person max, and there's so many different adaptations for different settings. I've used a Bloodborne and a Spider-Man version of Lasers and Feelings with my group, for example - no lore, you can adapt it to any setting and vibe you want, just google 'Lasers and Feelings hacks' or 'Lasers and Feelings [keyword]' to find whatever you need!

[rabbitindisguise]

Something I've noticed is how often disabled people pile onto the same hobbies they share with other disabled people, as I become more used to my Being Disabled

Like:

Fandom (cosplay, fanart, fanmixes, fanfic, lurking, rec lists, and general participating like reading, reblogging, liking fandom content)

Blogging, reading, journaling, writing

Fiber arts (felting, knitting, crochet, spinning, weaving, etc)

Homemaking (sewing, baking, cooking, gardening)

RPGs/board games/video games

Something I can only define as Thing (programming, chess, math, science, bugs, etc) where the *concept* is the focus rather than the activity

And like these are basically just things people like to do, however since I've become more disabled I've noticed that a lot of disabled people I interact with online do honestly most of these, often at least one in each category. It's a trope that people fall more into the fiber rabbit hole, but in particular people who are disabled seem to acquire these types of minimal physical activity hobbies at an exponential rate. I've gained 9 of these just this year. And I'm sure part of that is from developing an interest that folks around me share . . . which might be affected by my knowing so many disabled people. I've witnessed this through Tumblr as well, it seems to kick up from "I was disabled and didn't know so I liked to do this thing" to "I'm disabled and embracing my newfound identity by doing 3553234643 of these new activities I've never tried before." A sort of quarantine response but for being disabled.

Idk I need to think on this more when I'm not crashing into bearer of the curse time. There's some irony there that I can't analyze disability culture on account of my disabilities rip

[grim-echoes]

spill about LOSE-A honestly. one thing, though: everybody who plays lose-a lauds it for its candle-wax-on-nutsack, careful-incsision-against-inner-thigh, wooden-ruler-snapping-against-asscheeks difficulty which my challenge gamer brain can't. let. go. do you have any recs for truly difficult rpgs? and also is lose-a really difficult in a fun way or just because mr. bioessentialism spams one hit kill moves

i don't really play a lot of games in general because i'm extremely choosy and also conservative with my spending habits so i'm gonna ask my followers (and anyone else) to rec rpgs in place of me, but i feel like this is as good an excuse as any to say play jimmy and the pulsating mass because it's still some of the most fun i've ever gotten out of an rpg battle system on account of being very intelligently, deliberately designed and encourages the player to strategize in fun, open-ended ways that make use of all of the game's mechanics in a way that nothing feels arbitrarily designed, and buffs/debuffs, statuses, and items are all incredibly useful, and sometimes necessary to work into a strategy (it feels like one of these are relatively ineffective or way way too powerful at any given time in most rpgs, but not jimmy).

shin megami tensei as a whole kinda belongs here (not persona specifically) because the franchise is kinda infamous for being THE difficult jrpg series, and it's also similar in design to jimmy where enemy and boss design is very intelligent and deliberate, and puts its faith directly in you as the player to think carefully about every encounter and exactly how to prepare--older entries are fucking brutal due to their age, but some recent games are much more accessible and fair while still being plenty tough.

i'd honestly make the comparison to dark souls for games like this in terms of game design and how the tough-but-fair approach ties into a specific thematic element of the games, but are constructed intelligently so that failure feels meaningful. lisa is like dark souls II comparatively where it hypes itself up with how brutal and dark and shit and hard it is and how you need to be selfish and heartless to prevail but it's built on the back of a juvenile, horribly unempathetic narrative completely disinterested in the struggles of its actual most poorly treated characters and the only thing it has to say with its permadeath + enemy instakill/russian roulette mechanics is that you're a selfish cunt for trying to be a good person which like. i don't know how old austin was when he first made these games but it literally feels like some shit he designed after engaging with his first philosophical text at 14

[neomedievalist]

some ??hot?? takes: innocent sin feels more "contemporary" than persona 5 in terms of story. all this wild shit happening simultaneously just feels like looking at the news.

this one probably isn't a hot take, but persona games need to bring back character theme songs. 1) it owns, 2) it might prevent the p4/p5 problem of having Too Many Guys so they barely get the spotlight.

oh persona should stop dripfeeding party members. just introduce them all early and then give them arcs throughout the game. also let social links hook in.

thinking any of nocturne's reason endings are good is really silly. they all suck and are narratively unsatisfying, and all of the reasons are abhorrent. this makes sense for the game but i can't imagine someone thinking any of those endings are the best.

manikins should've been able to get a reason. the demifiend can already fuck with creation by restoring the old world / exploding the universe, he should've been able to force through the manikin reason.

yeah i can see what you mean. actually there are several different points in here let me respond to all of them

i mean, true, but p5 is hilariously modern, they literally use iphones to go to the demon dimension, and forum posts are your sidequests. i get thats not your point though, and it speaks to p2's longevity that its themes are still able to be relevant today. honestly, if p2 was made today, itd work even better with the misinformation age and the rumours theme. this is a tangent, but ive always thought digital devil saga is the most modern relevant smt and it takes its themes to the logical end thats perfectly fitting for the quote unquote new generation of smt, if it was released today it would hit exactly the same. i honestly think if smt was a chronological series with a clear start and end, the dds duology would be a perfect end to wrap up all the themes of the entire series. (that's why i wont rec it to newcomers to smt, but if youve played others and havent played it, you absolutely have to)

true! i mean i dont have any particular takes about theme songs but i think its something id like to see come back for sure.

to an extent yeah. i think p3 works so well because you already have a lot of the party members from the start who are all intertwined with each other and the lore of the story. persona has always worked best with a small cast but p3 works because all of the cast is relevant but they also dont try to act like they all get along perfectly. like, i dont think mitsuru talks to junpei as a friend. and thats normal. it helps make p3 more serious and not just goofy guys on an adventure, if that makes sense. but from a game balancing perspective, kinda tough to make that work lol. i think every party based rpg works like that, but it wouldnt be unreasonable to introduce characters early and then just not let you use them yet sort of like what p3 did with akihiko's broken arm, not being able to use mitsuru until you got another navigator, etc.

yeah, i mean, that's what smt is about. it's about choosing between bad and worse options. law and chaos is no better, really. well...actually no i would argue they are better but thats beside the point. i think i need to say for the record me saying i'm law aligned is a joke and i don't actually believe in anything that law believes, but, hopefully my followers have reading comprehension and can tell that from my blog.

true, but like i was saying before, the point of smt is choosing between bad and worse options, and having one clear good option defeats that purpose. but then again, neutral endings have been a thing in smt forever as the Objectively Good Option so, i guess it doesn't matter. yeah, i agree in-universe lore it would make sense though

[hcrpisms]

hey rp tags, hows it hanging ?? i have some downtime while on vacaiton rn if anyone wants to send in their indie blog / rpg for a shoutout , review , or rec !! or if anyone needs anything in general. come keep me company.

[rileyesquiremd]

I'm riley!!!!!

Hi hih i hihi! Im Riley Esquire. Not my real last name. AND im not a doctor either. Now that is only a taste of what you will learn in this upcoming intro post!

INFO... UNDER THE CUT!

Sooo >:3 a few things about me .

Im 22! Im a transguy, he/him but any prns if you know me and you like to have a little gender fun im not stopping u. im bi, just incase you need to know for having a crush on me reasons.

This is a sideblog, so if i follow you it'll be from dyna's blog, which isnt mine but we share a body so you know rest assured SOMEBODY in here will be looking at your posts!

A couple things I like:

Dancing/music/concerts/raves!!! pls send me music recs anytime i love listening to new songs.

Explorin, finding out abt new things to do and see. idc if ive never birdwatched or taxidermied an animal before or if ive never rummaged thru a scrapyard but id love to try it with u!!!

Doodling my friends and loved ones, and rendering my husbands pieces w him.... here we have posted some but we dont update as often as we should!!

Talking w people and helping out! body energy levels are low but id love to stay up all nite chatting with u or. well id say helping u move in to your place but i dont know you and i cant go all the way to Seattle to help you.

NOw lets get specific!!!!!

I have a letterboxd!!!! me and my headmates share it, so theres a lotta genres in there. but generally, i like fantasy, sci fi, adventure, action, drama. sometimes its a little hard for me to keep up with artsy movies but ill watch them. and i generally dont like horror at all. (sorry beau)

i dont play games TOO much, but i like co op games(tho, im not very good at them, so sometimes i get discouraged when i lose a lot.), adventure games, rpgs, casual games, and boardgames!!!!

asfor books!! i dont read too often but ill read anything. i've recently read the mysterious benedict society which was really charming. id honestly love to read A Thornbush Tale/Chesscourt series from The Northern Caves, I wish they existed........

comics! I kinda just hang out and read them with beau thats more his thing. but i like the comedies! ha ha funny sidekick go!!

MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!

generally, i have a lot of overlap with Beau's taste, so, rock/metal, electronica, EDM and industrial. however they lean toward synthwave more and i like more classic rock and oldies stuff. he HATES it when i want to play Everyday by buddy holly. but IM sayin, his names fuckin BUDDY!!!! this song cant be ominous

uhhh but ya send me songs !

as for specific medias, u can ask me abt them, but im not making a list of things im into! you will just have to find out.

but rest assured. triggers will be tagged. posts will be queued. you will have a great day!

and remember:

be kind!

[theresattrpgforthat]

Afternoon!

You might already be aware of these TTRPG designers, but I figured I'd pass them on if they might add to the knowledge pool for recommendations!

Will Uhl: https://willuhl.itch.io/ Just an absurdly prolific games designer, with a grounding in rules-light action-y games but has a wide range of tones and genres in their work. Mystic Lilies comes strongly recommended, their most famous game, Netbattlers, isn't on itch.io as it's a fangame that uses the Megaman IP (and is also excellent if you like games with in-depth character building)

Nathan Blades: https://sixofspades.itch.io/ More of a performer than a designer but has written a number of games, generally focused on upbeat anime action with queer community subtext. Heartbeats in Perfect Sync is probably their best known; they also have a one-pager in The Ultimate One-Page RPG Book.

Farmer Gadda: https://farmergadda.itch.io/ Explores a lot of system kits (CaltropCore, Lasers & Feelings, etc) to make games that reference specific game series and the like. The energy of picking up your favourite toy and moving it around the room with whoosh noises.

Rook/RJK Games: https://rjkgames.itch.io/ Prime itchio game zine production; passionate, feelings-first releases that each put a spin of a different indie game or system kit. A transformation of the orginal tone of a game to something else, like a magic trick.

Thanks for the recs! I've heard of some of these designers, and some I haven't. Let's look at a highlight of theirs that stands out for each one!

Mystic Lilies, by Will Uhl.

In a sealed-off region full of fantastical phenomena, the land is falling out of balance. You will play to find what people take and what people lose to regain that balance.

It looks like it's a card-based roleplaying game about witches fighting to get what they want. I'm interested in the character abilities, and curious about how the PvP interacts with different player styles. I'd assume that safety tools are a given at this table, and I'm definitely drawn in by the art.

Heartbeats in Perfect Sync, by Nathan Blades. (@theneoncaster)

Heartbeats in Perfect Sync is a tabletop RPG inspired by the shounen battle aesthetic. Play as a group of ordinary people who fight monsters with ridiculously over-the-top weapons.

I have heard of Nathan Blades before! I can see how this game would appeal to folks who love TWEWY, or Persona 5. I'm curious about what kind of dice this system uses - is it safe to assume that you need d6's for this game if the page doesn't specify? Also, folks should check out Iera Entera, a game by the same designer about killing, butchering, and eating gods. I think the concept is amazing.

SW//NG, by Farmer Gadda. (@farmergadda)

Because you have Power, you have Responsibility. Because of your Responsibility, you have to face your Past. And your Past? That's the one thing your Power can never fix.

I love complicated superheroes! I love emotional superheroes! This game gives you complicated and emotional superheroes! It also has some lovely GM advice and I always always appreciate good GM advice.

Our Love Will Destroy Us, by RJK Games.

You did it, exactly what the old fools of the Hunters’ Guild warned you against. Fell in love with your target, the both of you. One of you was barely trained, untested, didn’t know any better; the Guild might forgive you, but the other? You were meant to know better.

I'm pretty sure I've talked about this one before when I covered Tragic Games, so that might be why this game stands out to me. I think the use of Tarot Cards to reveal what the Hunger does to hurt the Vampire Hunter who has fallen in love with a Vampire, is really emotionally fitting.

[rpgchoices]

What rpgs do you recommend? This blog made me find out about a lot that ive never heard of and wanna play some day ^_^

Ohhh hello!! I think it depends on what you like in an rpg in general or what rpgs you played before and your priorities!

For me the main elements I want are characters and good story, but characters will always be first so I basically only play rpgs with companions. I also love romance but I tend to play only queer romances so I mainly play rpgs that allow me to play a wlw or mlm romance.

You can also check my series of useless recs and what to expect for different recs!

Let me know what kind of games you'd like to play and I can give some more personalized recs!

In general my absolute favorites are (divided in types)

ISOMETRIC (so a lot to read, and you look everything from above):

Pathfinder Kingmaker: amazing character, fav polyamorous romance with a lady elf and an orc guy, the story is okay and the mechanics are fine, but the characters really make it shine.

Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous: incredible customization of player character, great companions and romances, AMAZING story and villain. The mechanics and gameplay are like Kingmaker and not my favorite, but here they added turn based.

Pillars of Eternity (and sequel): amazing amazing story and very well created characters, the romances are not my favorite but I still love Tekehu!

Rogue Trader: this is set in a very bleak world where everyone is a villain so well, everyone is horrible. It is still quite a fun game if you do not mind the setting! And it has one of the most messed up romances ever (Marazhai)!

Shadowrun Hong Kong: I love the setting and the companion so much, but no romance.

Expediton Viking: Historical setting is not my favorite, but the game is still quite good and allows you do play as an usual companions rpg. It also has romanced!

DISCO ELYSIUM: I know I said I mainly play games with romances, and this has none, but everyone in the world should play Disco Elysium. One of the best isometric rpgs ever made.

Divinity Original Sin 2: If you liked BG3 maybe you will like this one too! The tone is much more humorous and absurdist, the story is quite good and the companions are amazing. The romances are also pretty good and as BG3 you can play as one of the companions.

ACTION RPG (is this even the name? Rpgs like Dragon Age and Baldur's Gate 3, so you can see the characters, and they speak)

Of course these need no introduction (but I put them in order of how much I love the companions and romances): Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Origins, Baldur's Gate 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda, Mass Effect trilogy.

Enderal: If you have Skyrim you can easily install Enderal for free, it is a mod but it is an indipendent game with its lore and characters. The only game that destroyed me and makes me cry when I think about it, so... play at your own risk. Amazing romances, incredible story.

The Technomancer: While the gameplay is a bit repetitive, the game is still pretty good! The characters are all interesting and the romance is kind of cute even if short.

OTHERS:

Sorcery!: This is an rpg that is basically the adaptation of a text game. It is absolutely perfect, one of my favorite games ever. It also has one of my favorite romances (Flanker)

Not exactly classic rpgs but still amazing: (I just wanted to recommend two of my favorite games that have roleplay elements):

Heaven's Vault

Dreamfall chapters (and the series in general)

[absolxguardian]

I’ve recently started playing Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and I’ve fallen in love, same as I did when I played Kingmaker. And I’m wondering if there are any isometric RPGs I should pick up during the Steam Summer Sale that can scratch that same itch. But I don’t think I’ll get the luck I’d want going through store pages and reviews to try to figure out what games are most similar to the Pathfinder ones in the ways I most like them. Should I get one of those Divinity or Pillar of Eternity games I’ve heard about. Or should I go back to the oldies that the Pathfinder Adventure Path adaptions are trying to be the spiritual sequels to. So I’ve decided to write out what my favorite parts of the games are, so people on tumblr can give me recs.

1. Companions. I’ve gotten a sense that some isometric RPGs tend to be solo adventures, or you can only have one companion follow you at a time. When I looked up “isometric RPG” I got the original Fallout games, and I know you’re not traveling around with a party. I want a game that’s you controlling several guys when you explore and fight, basically a way to play a Tabletop RPG on your own time. 

2. Story. This is my other essential. I don’t care about voice acting or graphics. But I want a story rich game, one that doesn’t have a high suspension of disbelief and a good amount of nuance. And for the main PC, either let me build a personality for them and influence the story with my choices, or have the game provide me with a personality. Don’t give me your Dragon Ages, where to my understanding, the fans are always cringing about the writing and its bad implications. I can understandably accept some stuff that didn’t age that well from the old Dnd ones, but that shouldn’t be a big part of the story- such as if there’s racist Orc worldbuilding, it should only be featured in a sidequest. I’ve already played Disco Elysium, loved that as well. 

3. No “permadeath” (permadeath is in quotes, because with the default settings in the Pathfinder games, you can still use resurrection spells). I have no idea how common this would be in these games, it might just be Pathfinder trying to transfer its punishing reputation into its default settings. The Pathfinder games have a lot of difficulty settings, and one is changing the death mechanics from how they normally work in the system to have your characters revive at the end of an encounter. I really do need it. But the main reason I turn it off, is because unlike a TTRPG, the game can’t properly react to a companion dying. You won’t get a new character to replace them, and you might miss out on their companion quests. In general a highly customizable difficulty would be nice, but not required. 

Those are my essentials, but here are the things that I’ve loved about the Pathfinder games.

4. A sense of a wider world. The Pathfinder games and the Adventure Paths they’re based on feel like they’re set in so much more real of a world than other games I’ve played. When a character references another nation, that place has also been developed. The use of the wider Golarion setting can be felt. My first thought was that I would be only able to find this in the DnD based games, but the games with original settings could also feel like they exist in a wider setting- one created with care. Disco Elysium, with all its references achieved a similar effect. 

5. Complexity. Again, this made me think of the DnD based games. You can end up with a lot more content with someone else already made the base mechanics for something else. But I don’t really need full Pathfinder level complexity. I’ve never played the game IRL. What I really want are a lot of classes and a lot of spells. 

And this last one is the most optional:

6. And extra element in addition to adventuring. The two Pathfinder Adventure Paths that have been adapted- Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous have both had another element, probably why they were chosen- they were the ones that would be able to benefit the most from the pros of a computer GM. Kingmaker has the management of the aforementioned kingdom you’re trying to found, and Wrath of the Righteous has you managing a crusade- there are tactical RPG and city building elements in this one. I enjoy this extra variety to the core gameplay loop and the wider perspective this requires you to have. So if there’s another game where you have to manage something like that- a kingdom, an army, a guild, that would be a nice bonus.

I’m excited to hear your recs. Also you should play Pathfinder Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous, it’s got all the stuff I just described. Don’t let the complexity of Pathfinder scare you off, the computer takes care of most of it.

[marshmallsy]

Some things from Prey (2017) that make me go absolutely insane (based off my recent twt ramblings)

the fact that the player character is asian. it’s not a choice. the default isn’t a white guy. you literally are a mixed-race asian person & that’s IT.

(and also like yeah, smth smth hints of yellow peril whenever the only asian rep we get also comes with scifi futuristic evil unethical-experimenting tech corporations, but WHATEVER, it still made me extremely happy to see so much diversity & representation in a cool rpg)

the fact that mikhaila’s gender doesn’t change so i, a queer half-asian woman, found myself playing a canonically queer half-asian woman. the joy was real.

the WORK put in by devs to make TALOS I genuinely feel like a place people worked and lived in. the ttrpg sessions in the rec room. the whiteboards scrawled with both scifi mumbo-jumbo & dumb jokes from bored scientists goofing around. reminders of garbage days & food in the fridge. mr. glooey mcglooface. the entire existence of the huntress boltcaster being mostly used to annoy coworkers & play silly games.

on the subject of the people, how utterly BATSHIT it is that every single corpse has a name & you can theoretically track every single person down. that they all have full names, their own personalities, that you can read emails or listen to audiologs of them interacting w/ each other, asking each other out on dates, arguing, sharing secrets, making plans with friends. and with very few exceptions, you find them all already dead or brainwashed or turned into phantoms. the premise makes me go feral every single time and I can’t get enough of it.

the fact that this game in general really rewards you for exploration & also requires it on some level, given that by exploring you can find notes/clues to get into safes or locked computers, or keycards to access other areas of the map.

danielle sho and abigail foy. danielle’s last actions being to help you find her lover’s killer before she suffocates out in space. need i say more.

ok, this one really makes me go wild. emmanuel mendez. a single audiolog, a single email, in a dangerous room you technically don’t even have to go in. 

“let’s say you discovered something dangerous. something everyone ought to know about.”

“i’d go out to that billboard and flash it big as vegas on the screen.”

again. this is optional. it’s not even technically a sidequest. you don’t EVER have to do this.

but you can. you can go out into space and fly yourself out to the giant billboards that orbit the station. you can find emmanuel’s corpse and the half-finished data he risked his life trying to transfer. you can choose to finish the upload.

ESCAPE PODS ARE FAKE

and for the rest of the game you see that flashing on the billboards every time you look out a window.

a top-of-the-line space station. conducting secret unethical experiments on human prisoners and aliens. and they sabotaged the escape pods.

god this game is good.

[forthegothicheroine]

I don't know if you've had this ask before, but I can't find it, so: I don't suppose you have any recs for really good Arthurian adaptations? I try to read the older texts but can't get into them, and the adaptations I've come across are in the 'I am Mordred' vein. (Apart from T. H. White, but I've read that.)

I can't blame you for having a hard time! The old texts are an acquired taste, to say the least (and I'm definitely no fan of Malory!) The most accessible of those is probably Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; I read the translation by Tolkein, which was a lot of fun. (You don't need to have read it to see the Green Knight movie, but as a Gawain fangirl I'm of course into it!) Same goes for The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, one of my favorite Beauty and the Beast stories. Those two poems together are what made me Team Gawain, out of all the knights!

What really got me into this whole thing was the musical Camelot and the movie with Richard Harris. This is my Arthur. This is the king I fell in love with. It's loosely based on TH White, but I like it better- the plot is a lot more concise, and while it's still not the most flattering depiction of Guenevere, it's a lot less openly contemptuous of her than White was; she actually gets a really sweet meet-cute with Arthur! For a trippier movie that covers more of the story, there's always John Boorman's Excalibur, which attempts to compress all of Morte D'Arthur into a couple hours. I think this is the adaptation that started the trend of merging Morgan and Morgause, which upsets some people but I find very understandable, and Helen Mirren as Morgana absolutely steals the show!

For books, I'm a big fan of the Squire's Tales series by Gerald Morris, another Gawain superfan. This YA series shows the glory and then the fall of Camelot, often (though not always) through the eyes of Gawain's mysterious squire Terrance. My favorites in the series are The Ballad of Sir Dinadan and The Princess The Crone and the Dung Cart Knight, but start at the beginning and read all the way through for the full narrative- they're all fast reads! If you want to get into I Am Mordred-style stories about one particular character, there's a heartbreakingly tragic Mordred in The Winter Prince by Elizabeth Wein, and a gritty detective Kay in Idylls of the Queen by Phyllis Ann Karr. If you want to read more direct adaptations of Mort D'Arthur, I would recommend the series Arthur Dies at the End by Jeffrey Wikstrom, an extremely irreverent retelling that's much more readable. (One volume is called Sir Tristan is Just Awful.) I'm sometimes into Malory adaptations and sometimes not- I wish more adaptations in general didn't feel bound to the Mayday massacre just because it was in Malory, it wasn't in most of the texts- but these are very good.

I strongly recommend the podcast Myths and Legends in general, but in particular I love their King Arthur episodes. They follow the Mort D'Arthur story, which once again is not my favorite, but they do it in entertaining detail with lots of depth of character. It's pretty harsh on Merlin, but hey, he got all of TH White to build him up, he can take it!

Finally, I would be remiss in not mentioning The Great Pendragon Campaign, an old rpg supplement that runs through the plot of everything from the pre-Arthur era to the fall of Camelot. I don't always agree with the choices they make of what to include, but it's an attempt to combine all the 'canon' sources into one continuous narrative. It's available on drivethrurpg.com as a pdf.

Followers, add anything you'd suggest!

[talkinbouttinygames]

Glitchhikers: The Beta Logs

Around late Fall in 2021, I volunteered to beta-test the Glitchhikers remake, Glitchhikers: the Spaces in Between. I should note that this wasn’t a job, I didn’t get paid, and all I was asked to do was give general feedback on the game after playing it through. Really, it’s a kind of beta-test that functioned more as a mechanism for generating hype than actual beta-testing for a paycheck, which, I admit I have some quibbles with, but hey, I signed up to do it anyway.

This fact of beta-testing means I can’t recommend the game in a normal issue, but it did give me a fair amount of thoughts about the game, so I wrote ‘em down, locked ‘em away, and am now releasing them to the wild now that the game is on the market. I should stress that once again that this is not a recommendation or a review (as if I did those, hah), and it is only my thoughts on what the game looked like still in beta. On with the show, and spoilers abound.

I’m talking to a dragon, or least what used to be a dragon. It used to be one of a legion, proud and powerful, a species with technological might in living flesh, and now, having escaped the end slated for the rest of its kind by packaging itself into data and connecting to the human internet it is utterly alone. As it tells me of the things it has lost through in having to downgrade to our much more primitive technology, it notes that one side effect is distortions, its voice stutters through that last word – and an overhead voice chimes in, telling us what the next stop is. Because the dragon and I, we are two passengers on a communal train, headed somewhere in the night.

I covered the original Glitchhikers (now termed Glitchhikers: First Drive) in my 2020 Hallowe’en Rapid-fire Recs issue, but for the uninitiated, it is a short, experimental game about the of experience driving down a near-empty highway at 12AM and talking about life, the universe, and everything with the various hitchhikers you pick up under the surreal weight of the night. Glitchhikers: the Spaces In Between expands upon that experience, both in adding more fidelity and detail to that specific night driving experience, and by having 3 other journeys that try to bring about that state of mind – The Railway, The Path, and The Terminal.

For the most part, they succeed quite handily. I likely have the least to say about The Highway, having played the original game several times over. What I can say is that they’ve put effort into overhauling the experience on multiple fronts (I replayed the original game after I finished beta-testing). The landscapes you drive by are given much more variance in terms of the natural facets you see, and there are visible changes in the elevation that you’re driving at, too. It’s also just a huge quality bump from the original, I was just shocked at how rough and low-poly First Drive was upon replaying it. Replaying First Drive also showed that the visuals weren’t the only things retooled. The first hitchhiker you meet in Spaces is the same as the one in First Drive, and you do have a slightly different conversation with her, though the essential bits from the original, such as her childhood make-believe with the stars, are still there. (Another detail I like is how the occasional other vehicles will wink in and out of existence on the road as you blink your tired eyes.) You’re still given the choice to exit into the city or keep on driving at the end, and after you complete your first journey an infinite drive mode is unlocked, which is all I ever needed, thank you.

Along with The Highway, The Railway is the only other journey available to you from the start, and it was the one I was the most excited for, because I am huge fan of trains as a transitive space to journey in. So much that a few years ago I briefly drafted up a Tabletop RPG about riding a train, viewing the sights, and having conversations with your fellow passengers. I still think that a Tabletop RPG is a great medium for such a communal activity, but until I pick up the idea again, The Railway serves as an excellent way to satisfy my cravings. Compared to the fleeting interactions that you have with the hitchhikers, with The Railway everyone is on the same train, so you can have progressing conversations with the other passengers as you take in the various sights.

In a manner that aligns with how the player is stationary inside their vehicle on The Highway, freeform movement with the WASD keys does not exist on The Railway, nor any area in the game, aside from The Terminal, which we’ll get to. Instead, there are various hotspots that the player can click on to move to in each room, and progress towards the front of the train. This movement system surprised me at first, since it’s rather unconventional, and I doubt the designers couldn’t just program in traditional WASD movement. This hotspot method is one that de-emphasizes the player’s movement around the train, and instead puts focus on the movement of the train along its tracks.

As with The Highway there’s a sort of role-playing choice, too. As you walk forward in the train cars, there’s an option to get off at whatever stop the train is at instead of continuing on your journey. Perhaps you found a place you wanted to lie low in for a while, or maybe it was your destination all along. There’s enough detail about the stops to make it a meaningful decision, as the overhead announcer (The Railway’s equivalent of The Highway’s late-night radio program) gives a description of wherever you’re headed. At one point when I was on The Railway, the overhead announced that we were approaching a town – I can’t remember the name – that was left in ruins after the practices of a powerful few drove it into the ground, and stated, simply, “We won’t be stopping there.”

The Railway is also where I once again met the Star Woman from The Highway, who appeared as the first hitchhiker in every other journey since, as a way of establishing a baseline of social interaction for your journeys – and to make it clear that you’re able to meet the same hitchhiker across journeys, if it doesn’t happen naturally. The Railway also plays with surreality as a backbone of its structure. Given how you talk with the same people multiple times, instead of forcing you to meander back and forth in the train cars to have your subsequent conversations with a passenger, in The Railway you’re always moving forward, to the front of the train, where the other passengers lie for their next conversation after you finish the preceding one. It makes movement more fluid, and it also adds a sense of forward permanent progress that mirrors your familiarity with the other passengers. Also before you move onto the next group of train cars, you enter one that’s an endless dreamscape completely separate from the movement of the train and the outside world, which works as an introspective pause between conversational rounds, and is just breathtaking and a lovely surprise the first time it happens. Alas, there is not a matching Infinite Ride mode for The Railway. A man can dream.

After completing the The Railway, I moved onto The Path, because that was the order in which they were listed to me, and I am conformist dweeb. Unlike the vehicular basis for The Highway and The Railway, The Path is a walk through a park at night, accompanied by one’s iPod playlist, which is another wonderful fantasy game space, because if I ever tried to take a walk in a park at night with my earbuds in, I fear I’d find myself in a schlocky horror movie. The playlist is alternates between soundtrack songs a mini-podcast that talks about the wonders of life, and aside from occasionally coming across other hikers scattered across the area, you’re left to your thoughts and your playlists as you wander amongst its various sights and structures.

Though perhaps wander isn’t quite the right word, as though The Path forgoes The Railway’s hotspot movement system, it isn’t quite free-roaming, either. Instead, the player can only move forward or backward along the literal walking path as if tethered to an invisible rail. This emphasizes that it is, in fact, a path – your journey is not one of uncharted exploration, it’s walking a route along a local park with some nice sights. There is also an auto-walk key if you get tired of holding down W, which I used liberally.

Even though you’re on a rail, being in a park means that you do have means of deciding where to go along its many paths, and the designers found a way to deal with the directional ambiguity in their unique movement system, too. Whenever approaching a fork, a trail of light will appear and go down whatever path you’re set to go down, giving you time to course-correct. (Aesthetically, it’s fitting that said trail looks like the imprints of headlights in long exposure photographs). Aside from that, there’s not much I can say aside for the fact that the various park decorations are wonderfully varied with a lovely use of space and height, along with some more surreal pocket dimensions. The park is also a location anchored relative to the rest of the journeys, as at a high point on the edge of the park one can look out to see The Highway and the city that lies at the end of it.

Finally, there’s The Terminal, the final journey and a bit of a black sheep, as for it, Glitchhikers finally gives into movement convention and allows for free exploration with the WASD keys inside of a (near) empty airport where all the flights have been delayed. Which – okay, alright, if you are also a conformist dweeb, then the order of the journeys has a progression of more and more player direction, which is nice, but the use of traditional movement tech when everything else has been almost stubbornly experimental, whether through necessity or design, suddenly recasts a sense of doubt about the movement tech of the preceding journeys. If they could’ve done WASD all along, why didn’t they? Which is not to say there isn’t a point to using variant movement tech (I think my previous commentary shows that there is), but that the switch back to the Same Old is somewhat jarring. (Of course, this is where the fact that this is a beta log comes in – maybe the final game will go WASD. I doubt it, but I could be wrong.)

Regardless, going off of the freeform movement in The Terminal – it’s a bit rough in a way that the other, more limited movement schemes aren’t. This isn’t a deal breaker, it’s not worse than, say, a good itch.io Jam game, only that it makes it harder to really immerse one’s self in the game space to be able to embrace the nighttime mood that is its lifeblood. This immersion hindering movement is compounded by the presence of these… grey spheres with varying rings of colour around them (I should note that a rainbow trail of your movement follows you in The Terminal, although my description makes it sound much more gaudier than it its). These spheres, compared to the casual surreality of the past journeys, are overtly… game like. They look like power-ups, and they functionally act like them, too – upon passing through one, you speed up and occasionally are catapulted into the air in a display of physics I don’t really understand, and then all of the other little spheres gets an extra ring of colour.

The Terminal’s wide expanse is about the time you spend in stasis, when you’re left waiting with nowhere to go. With The Railway and The Highway, you had a destination, and with The Path, you were wandering around the park because you liked what it had to offer, it was journey as destination in the simplest form, but with The Terminal the very first thing you hear is a news broadcast (The Terminal’s equivalent of radio program, overhead announcer, or podcast) that all flights have been delayed, indefinitely. You are then left to wander around the premises, killing time. And, admittedly, here the low-poly style of Glitchhikers flounders a bit – it’s always the weakest when trying to express manmade structures – The Terminal is a building of dull blues save the occasional news broadcast, and the architecture is rough in a way that looks unfinished and amateur instead of charming. I can see why the designers might add in the spheres as a way of adding variety to compensate for the much less compelling setting, but I have enough belief in their clarity of vision from the rest of the game that I feel like there surely could’ve been another way to go about it.

All of these factors aside, I want to stress that I do see the point in The Terminal’s divergence from the rest of the game. Aside from the fact that experimentation is good and what birthed First Drive, The Terminal is still about a slightly surreal in-between experience, just a much less aesthetic and more lonesome one. And that change from traveling with a purpose, from talking to many other traveler (in The Terminal there’s just one), does take chops. It’s just that it seems to capture the experience in a less compelling many than any of the other journeys – though perhaps my perspective is a bit biased, as earlier in the year I played the itch.io game Interminal, which tried to express that same experience to greater success. This is not a dig at Glitchhikers, which has an overarching purpose to its terminal beyond just replicating experience, and Interminal has a different aesthetic style and time of day that plays better to the location, but the comparison was not a flattering one.

As mentioned before, The Terminal has only one traveler, once again Starkid Lady, who appears at the bar after you tramp around from news broadcast to news broadcast. This makes your conversation with her denser, even employing a conversational loop wherein your dialogue choices do not move onto a new set of options unless you specifically choose it so. This allows for a more one-on-one conversation that you get anywhere else, which is a nice bookend of the solitude wandering that you engage in before it.

In addition to all of these places, there’s also the first one you see: The Stop. It functions as a physical journey select and what-hitchhikers-have-I-met menu in the form of a rest stop. At The Rest Stop, you can see the various cars that represent The Highway, Infinite Drive, and the Classic Mode unlocked after playing through each journey once which is a strict faithful remake of First Drive.  Looking around, you’ll also see the train car that takes you to The Railway, the lamp-lit, thrush-surrounded, trail leading to The Path, and the crossing sign that takes to The Terminal. On the other side is The Stop itself, where you can see which hitchhikers you’ve met and talk to the Clerk to get information about the game. It’s a lovely way of immersing the player into the game’s world.

Also, because The Stop has the most prominent use of the Glitchhikers logo, I’m going to talk about how good it is. The logo is taken from isolating the back-to-back capital Hs in the title, with a heart in between the two of them, literally marking the space in between the two parts of that compound word. But in The Stop, the logo is one of lit signs they have, and as lit signs are wont to do, parts of it are blown. Specifically, the upper stems of each H on the inner sign, transforming them into two chairs facing each other, which is just perfect.

Of course, the locations are only part of Glitchhikers, the other component being the hikers themselves. I only played each journey once in order to not spoil the final game with beta-redundancy, so I only met 10 hitchhikers (aside from Star Lady I had another repeat), but among them I had a wide variety of conversations, from a grieving woman to scientist in awe of the universe to a nihilistic alien child. And these conversations do display a shift in focus from First Drive – the specificity to issues of the real world. Whereas the conversational topics of First Drive trended broadly philosophical, like the scope of the universe, or personal to character’s lives and childhoods, The Spaces In Between drills specifically to the systems of the world: one hitchhiker who debates the ethics and ramifications of technological progress cites how A.I. can replicate racial profiling bias, and another directly calls out Capitalism for stealing away her time to exist as a person and more than a cog in a machine.

This is a bit jarring coming so directly from a video game, but at the same time, it’s necessary change. First Drive was released in 2014, but in 2021 the concept of having deep philosophical and existential conversations about the world is impossible without looking at it in the eye and naming what we see. However, at times, it felt uncomfortable to discussing these topics in the game space, even when I was selecting dialogue options I legitimately agreed with. This might be an unintentional symptom of being on social media, but admittedly, sometimes the frequent references to leftist issues felt like the game was trying to flash its political-philosophical credentials. As it is, politics, and anything dealing with the seamy, seamy issues of the world is something unbelievably complex and nuanced, which is something that games have often struggled with for as long as they have existed – and unlike just wondering about the nature of our existence in the impossibly grand scale universe, it’s much more hefty and loaded, because it deals so much more with the injustice in the world and people fighting to be recognized as human. But occasional awkwardness aside, I stand by the notion that this was the right choice – much better to awkwardly grasp at the truth than try and create an ‘apolitical’ game that ignores something integral to its concept and themes for the sake of keeping the boat steady.

Or, perhaps, maybe the occasional bristling against the anti-capitalistic themes was the mild hypocrisy? I did volunteer to perform free labor on a whim. I’m not accusing the team because I knew it was going to be unpaid, and again, the only thing ‘required’ was a general feedback form instead of the active bug-seeking work the actual beta testers I hope they have are doing. It is, as I said in the intro, more of a hype campaign. But at the same time, it’s not something I can ignore when examining the game’s leftist and anticapitalistic themes.

Aside from the specificity of subject matter (part of which also comes from having a wider swathe of hikers in general), another thing about the hitchikers is that they essentially don’t have a fourth wall. On two different occasions I’ve chosen a dialogue option with my head in the game space, only to be pinned under a metatextually aware response I didn’t see coming. The first time was on The Path, talking to the mourning woman who I had met earlier on The Railway. She asked me what I was planning to do after this, and I figured she’d meant walking in the park. I don’t remember what I answered, except it was casual, and to that she questioned my ability to throw off the weight of the night so easily, saying, “Do these journeys not linger?”

The other time was elsewhere in park, where I was talking to a group of floating crystals about the impact of human on the environment, and they asked “Are we life?” I answered yes, figuring that by we they were referring to themselves as some sort of hive mind, and referencing their digital-looking nature. They challenged me on that, stripping back the curtain and calling every hiker a set of planned responses to designated stimuli. In both moments, I answered an extradiegetic question thinking it was a intradiegetic one – but strangely, I don’t feel tricked. The ambiguity of language is always in play when you’re talking to real people, and for some reason, exposing the game as a constructed reality only emphasizes it as a sort of pocket dimension one can journey to, from time to time.

As far as my beta-testing playthrough went, Glitchhikers: the Spaces In Between was a wonderful experience that did a solid job of expanding on the core experience of the original game. It wasn’t perfect, no, there were stumbles, but even where there were cracks you could see legitimate intent in saying something outside of the aesthetic experience even when that aesthetic experience was pretty damn good, and I think that’s worth a lot. It is very much the remakequel I was hoping for.

[prokopetz]

hi! i was wondering if you had any advice for a gm first trying to branch out from dnd, specifically how to find more games? i know im at a point where i'd need to completely change all of the worldbuilding and mechanics for what i have in mind and it'd make way more sense to just use a different game but i don't really know how to search for other games in the first place/find out if they'd work without just guessing and testing a bunch of them, which seems expensive and time consuming. thanks!

There isn’t really any way to get around “time consuming” – the only way to broaden your knowledge of the hobby is to familiarise yourself with more games, and you can’t usefully skip that part by having other people describe them to you; at some point you’ve gotta delve into them yourself.

However, “expensive” isn’t a given. There are quite a lot of free and pay-what-you-want tabletop RPGs out there – I’ve published a few myself. There are some recent-ish rec posts I’ve put together on the subject:

Low-prep games for small groups  

Games on a budget for solo and one-on-one play  

Oneshot-friendly free/PWYW titles which are specifically not grimdark  

A response to somebody asking basically the same question back in 2018  

Free/PWYW games in general (also covers video games, so scroll a bit to get to the tabletop RPGs)  

More free/PWYW games in general (also covers commercial titles with free demo versions)

(There are probably a lot of repeats in there, but I’m sure you can sort it out yourself!)