#or Beam Saber game

[mecha-slut]

mecha oc lore???

ok bc I’ve been thinking about it all day and need to get it out of my system, I’m gonna just do like, an OC Character Sheet thing for Lunar Orbit Lunar Orbit’s (she/her) a freelance mech pilot on the run from the secret paramilitary unit she was trafficked into. Extensively trained to pilot mecha and drones, Lunar currently pilots the Jade Rabbit; a heavily refurbed Queen-CUSTOM unit. It makes use of a custom A.I. model named AURA, which was stolen from Lunar’s previous employers. While she refuses to adopt a pseudonym (aside from her call sign, Queen Bee), Lunar DID think the best way to change her appearance was to dye her hair, put on big sunglasses, and gain about 200lbs. The results have been mixed. Her rival is Amber Waltz, Lunar’s ex-girlfriend and C.O. of her former unit. Lunar shot her (literally) in the back to secure her escape, and she remains pissed about that. Amber saw right through Lunar’s “disguise”, and constantly needle’s Lunar about how big she looks all stuffed into her cockpit (Lunar gets huffy and mad in response, but still chugs soda on mission like it’s water). Lunar is about 5′10″ with soft features, and is fairly stock and (very) fat. She has a shaggy, grown out wolf cut that was subjected to a bad blonde dye job she’s currently growing out. She dresses pretty casually, usually with her pilot suit tied around her middle and a crop top over a sports bra. Anything casual and easy to wear. She’s overconfident and a little dumb, and frequently gets herself into difficult situations that she usually can, at least in her mech, get out of. She’s a brat and is pretty selfish, but deeply cares for the people in her life. Currently, she’s struggling to reconcile that with the betrayal of the person she loved the most. Is a slut and is frequently found under other women.

[prokopetz]

I can just tell the author was chuckling to themselves the entire time they were composing this paragraph.

[ahcoffeebeans]

beam saber: simple sheets are live!

you can find the itch page at: https://ahcoffeebeans.itch.io/bs-ss

what are simple sheets?

"simple sheets" is a shorthand for a playsheet design philosophy that emphasizes utilitarian and clear information organization. everything is stripped down to be immediately legible and easy to use from the moment you first open the sheets.

[asimovsideburns]

communist sharpshooter call that a designated marxman

[vyctorianbyron]

Lancer RPG is cool

But it feels like a very incomplete RPG system, because it only really focuses on the mecha and makes that aspect really crunchy and mechanically deep However the human and non-mech combat side of the game is very narrative play focused with few mechanics or depth of any kinda outside third party supplements and at that point it be better to just slot in a different TTRPG to handle the non-mecha side of things So I really hope if they ever make a 2nd edition they have expanded rules for roles outside of Lancer (Mech) pilot

[fiovske]

Do you have any recs for other non-DnD game systems? I've only ever played 5e, and I'm a little intimidated to get into other systems, but I also want to branch out and get away from WOTC's bullshit.

Sure thing! I am also including a link to the itch.io pages since that's where i get most of these games!

Blades In The Dark: i'm mentioning this first bc the rules are very easy to grasp and if you're looking for a setting that has a touch of ghosts and steampunk, this game is the perfect gateway to that! it's the best for a heist i have found and the game mechanics and names are so soo sick here's just a slice from their itch.io page:

personally i find the setting and the stress mechanic very cool, because it takes into account the mental toil that an action can have and i find games with inbuilt consequence mechanics very compelling! it introduced the concept of clocks to me and i am obsessed.

a) adjacent to Blades, are all Forged In The Dark Games which are third-party blades games, and the most notable of them is Scum and Villiany which is space-western setting and also my favorite and if you're looking to play a game in the breadth of star-wars like interplanetary politics and everything, i highly recommend this game! b) if you're looking for a Blades game with mechanics to suit something more royalty-adjacent, with court-politics and agendas and masquerade parties and all, like say d20's court of fey and flowers vibe then i recommend Court Of Blades! I havent gotten around to playing this yet but it looks really promising and i soo badly want to play a game in this setting!

2. The Ground Itself : this is a world-building game. focused on one single place over time and how it changes and how it's people change, the events of this game can be spaced out from a week to several millennia depending on the rolls of ur dice or your choices! i have found that this game serves very well as say, a session zero game also, for setting up a place before you play in it, and not only a very fun session of making a place together for your party to play in, but also not leaving all the work to the gm! so it's a win win situation!

tbh, all games by everest pipkin are very good! i wanna get my hands on world ending game as well bc it is a game about giving your campaign, your world-building and your characters the perfect send-off.

3. Wanderhome : if you're looking for something ghibli-esque (this is the closest i can come to defining this game thru popular media) then i highly recommend wanderhome! it's got a very cozy pastoral vibe to it and the art is really beautiful and you get to pick from a range of animal-folk to play as it's very cool!

also honorable mentions,

a) Sleepaway is a game by the same creator in which ur a camp counsellor to a bunch of misfits and horror stories around campfires ensue! b) Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast which is an upcoming game which you can still back and it looks really interesting so i'd recommend checking it out as well!

4. Lancer: this game has mechs it has space-battles and you get to be a pilot in a future set years in the future and a thousand directions to take ur campaign in! he relationship between pilot and mech is smth that can be so personal.....

i wanna play lancer sometime it has very cool mech designs and it has very much piqued my interest, if i find ppl who wanna play lancer w me im 🏃🏃!

5. Heart The City Beneath : honestly, one of my fave settings of all time, it has strong horror components so mind the cws! but the classes and the game mechanics are very intuitive and overall it helps you not only build a character that feels natural and organic, but since this is a horror setting, things do not have happy endings... however it will ensure that your characters have a well-built journey whose ends will be terrifying and magnificent.

I got introduced to the fallout mechanic through this game and oooo how i love it, it's the perfect blend of your actions have consequences + every consequence is interesting and will affect your character deeply and emotionally, which is <33

this list got too long so i will just mention some more here:

the quiet year (very good map-making game, for before the frost shepherds arrive in winter.)

beam saber (forged in the dark game that deserves its on mention! austin ramsey's games i highly recommend!)

thirsty sword lesbians (ecactly what it says on the tin, i wanna check this game out also)

lotr's one ring rpg (this one is the closest substitute to classic d&d bc lets be real. tolkien is where d&d got it's shit from. and i have heard good things abt this game even tho i've never had the chance to play it)

mothership rpg (space horror whose build mechanics are very easy and user-friendly and i've had a LOT of fun with this!)

orbital (one very beautifully written rpg about life in space and it's only 32 pages but well-worth the time, highly recommend)

that's all i can give off the top of my head, i might've missed a few but these are strong standouts, so i hope u find at least one to your liking!

[bunkerhillbros]

from 鍬形斑.

[austinramsaygames]

Are there any interesting draft mechanics or ideas about how mechanics could have looked different from early development of Beam Saber you'd like to show off?

Surprisingly not really. There were a number of ideas that didn't end up in the final version of the rulebook but the good ones got saved for supplements (primarily the Growing Conflict's pilot playbooks) and the bad ones really made the game worse.

Here are 3 of the bad ones:

Originally there were NINE (9) different types of supply points that eventually got combined down into Personnel and Materiel. I was trying to create the feeling that squads never had enough of what they needed but that still exists with just two.

The Collect Downtime Activity didn't have a cumulative penalty for repeat uses. Turns out the possibility of an entanglement on any die coming up a 1 wasn't enough of a deterrent and one Playtest group did something like 47 Collects in a single downtime because they could pay off any Entanglements.

I wasn't going to include any psychic (magical) bullshit, like the Empath playbook, but watching Zeta Gundam convinced me that so long as the powers didn't include stuff like telekinesis or pyrokinesis, they could be a lot of fun. Now there are 3 psychic playbooks (Empath, Hive, and Forewarned) and I think they are all really interesting because they stuck to my rule about psychic powers.

[humanmorph]

millie n leap...... im simply fond of them : ]

🔫🐟👏🤖🏴‍☠️

[runningdoggames]

Sharing some snippets of the Beam Saber supply drop I've been chipping away at for about six months now! I'm pretty excited about how it's going - it will include a new faction type, a new squad type, and five new playbooks.

[ultimateanna]

Silent Hill 3 - Heather Mason readying the saber

[e1dritchqueer]

Thinking about them again....

[cloudcrouton]

Hello!! I’m opening my commissions! There’s no slot limit currently, but I hope you’ll consider commissioning me!

I love fanart and oc commissions and everything in between, so feel free to hit me up or ask any questions!

[cloobert]

Who Is Clooby

Hi everyone-- I’ve had this account for almost a decade now but now that twitter is slow-motion dying I want to dive back into this site.

And part of that is explaining who I am, now! I’m Clay or Clooby, a writer of fiction, bad joke, and tabletop games. I’ve always loved the Gothic, the grand, and the mythic, and try to harness and repurpose that every chance I get. Other than that, I cook pasta and walk long distances, generally. I’ve yet to decide what specifically will go where, between here and @cloobywrites, but here’s what i do: My two published (ish) works are: Over Sea, Wander Home, a book for Jay Dragon’s Wanderhome about adding a sort of epic maritime dimension to the game’s wandering. Perfect if you want to play a former sea captain, lying (or honest) big-fish storyteller, or a cartographer looking to bound the world in maps.

END THE WORLD, a painful PBTA ashcan about, well, ending the world. It’s run straight through with my feelings about a recent death in my family and the pain of the summer of 2020, so it may never be truly finished, but it’s certainly playable right now.

I’m also working on a lot of current projects: I’m writing Mobile Chariot Aurochs (working title), a mecha novel about vampiric wood Chariots piloted with marionette strings. It's got sex, duels, and my complicated thoughts about Sayla Mass and Haman Karn threaded through it.

Next is another untitled project--this time my expansion for Austin Ramsay's Beam Saber. Real Robot is often about war, yes, but it is so often also about living in the shadow of the greatest war anyone has ever seen. So I'm adding five playbooks, two squad playbooks, and a setting made for emulating things like Zeta Gundam, Iron Blooded Orphans, After War Gundam X, and a whole bunch of others.

Below is the Comet, a playbook about flying in and out of history's great orbits:

And here are some abilities from the Shrike, a pilot burns their mechs hot and fast:

Next, I'm developing the Sparked by Resistance game Last Day Academy-- A game about teaching at the awful school for magic and monsters that you once attended. It's a personal, painful game, but it also lets you play a pyromancer who burns their own futures for the energy to get through grading season.

or a toxic-soul-waste repository who uses the runoff in their soul to work miracles:

Next, is The Lies from Friday Rhapsody's, a game about doing Lupin III style cartoon heists in a weird city with a shattered sky. This one has an all new system based around both playing and cheating at blackjack in genuinely every way to cheat I could imagine. You can also play an invertebrate clown. This one is on a back-er burner solely because it really wants a real  deck of cards to be marked up and altered as the adventures go on.

Finally, I've been writing Death Comes to Little Island, a Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine campaign in the mode of things like Stand By Me and Anohana about grief, growing up, and also fistfighting Death on the beach. One of the main characters dropped out of world-killing void god school. They're a hoot.

[vforvalensa]

I got stranded in New Jersey due machinations of the airline industry against me and now I got a lot of expenses I was not expecting. Please buy some ttrpg games to help me escape from Jersey!

https://itch.io/s/98885/stranded-in-jersey-bundle

[corvidcall]

i dont play ttrpgs anymore really (i got very shy over the pandemic, and also i had a really bad experience making an actual play at the start of the ap podcast boom, which resulted in me kind of falling out with the indie ttrpg scene as a whole) but one thing i very much miss was how much fun i had naming characters. my go-to move, especially for any scifi game, was to just use a random noun generator to name my characters. got some real bangers from that