#ostrichmonkey

[jdragsky]

🌈 (dealer's choice), ☔, 🌤️?

🌈 favorite playbook/class from In The Time Of Monsters

even though she only has 15 HP, the ice witch can create an endless number of arcane wards which grant her the ability to survive billions of points of damage (which is needed in a game that regularly uses exponents)

☔ game idea i dont know i'll ever get around to

game where the rules are explained by an anthropology paper about the weird freaks who invented the game back in the 1920s as part of their cult

🌤️ favorite mechanic from a game i'm workign on

in Prince of Hounds, your three stats are the three laws you're bound to (Thou Shalt Not Kill, Thou Shalt Not Steal, Thou Shalt Not Fall In Love). each of these has a number between 1 and 6, and you roll under if youre taking action to follow a law and roll over if you're taking action to break that law. i'm very proud of the whole system!

[hmooncreates]

for the tarot asks: Chariot and Emperor?

The Chariot — What is the next project you’re planning to start OR What is the next project you’re excited to finish?

omg i'm very excited to finish my haunted house game! it's a game about one person playing as House Itself and each of the other players are trying to defeat the house itself. and the other players are trying to avoid traps set by the house. it's by far the biggest game i've taken on

The Emperor — Do you have a process you follow with your design work? OR How important is mechanical complexity to you?

boy do i wish i had a process lmao. i don't <33 but i'm trying to like. form one? i will say, mechanical complexity isn't a high priority for me i'm much more focused on the story element of a ttrpg

[tarot ttrpg ask game!]

[temporalhiccup]

🌤️, 🌼, ❄️?

🌤️Share your favorite mechanic from a game you’re working on.

(From a game who's title I cannot reveal muahahahaha)

Shadow Self

When you fall into your Shadow Self - The predator in your bones and flesh tears your mind asunder. Now you are only teeth and claw, pain and blood. Everyone is prey to you, they are all weak and deserving of death.

While you are in your Shadow Self you gain the Question Are you being merciless with your prey?

To escape your Shadow Self - You must ask someone, Am I safe enough to be the weakest version of myself? If they prove it to you and you show true weakness, gain one Bond with them and return to normal.

🌼Share something beautiful from one of your games (name the game, or let me choose). From space pirates! (not the final name of the game, please don't be the final name of the game)

The Sirens’ Call

What the sirens truly are is a mystery, one that tastes of blood and despair. They lurk in the darkest spaces between stars, in the loving embrace of black holes.

The crew of the Blood Rose drifts idly among the tides, unaware of the black hole that will soon form nearby. What is the first sign that something isn’t right?

The Sirens’ Song pierces through the light years, and gravity begins to buckle. What desperate plan does the crew of the Blood Rose form and why is it doomed?

Those with an intimate relationship with death see the black hole first, blooming and pulling all light into it. When the sirens finally reveal themselves, what beautiful but terrifying shape do they take? 

The Blood Rose is pulled into the black hole, and the sirens embrace each doomed crew member. As the ancient ship is torn apart, what do the sirens feast on?

DOCKING ACTION: As we dock one of us catches a glimpse of a wretched specter. A member of The Blood Rose’s crew is now a siren’s echo, twisted by the black hole and stretched across the light years and through the tides. What does their sad song remind you of? ❄️Share a piece of flavour text from a game you’re working on. Honestly, (like many designers) my game design style usually means flavour text is also part of the mechanical text haha but! Here:

From Twilight Throne: The Houses of Ruin!

The Kraken's Clock must never strike again. Should it ever come to life, it will unleash a flood to drown the world and bring an end to this age. An army of battle mages and dreamwalkers attend to this difficult task, shattering time again and again to keep the clock still. Dreams had within the Clocktower are known to become prophecy.

[cjlinton]

🔮, ✨?

✨ A game I wish more people were talking about.

I found out about Steel Hearts by Sandro A.D. a couple weeks ago and I’ve been pretty taken with it! I think it’s a really neat edition to the lineup of existing mecha RPGs. I haven’t had the chance to play yet, but it’s given me a ton to think about with regard to design which is something I really value in an RPG and I want to talk about it with more people.

(I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I personally look for in mecha games: I enjoy Lancer’s combat system and Horus mechs but not so much the narrative mechanics or worldbuilding, and I’ve yet to get into Beam Saber, so I’ve really been enjoying going through Steel Hearts.)

🔮 One of my favorite memories playing a game by someone else.

In my second Cyberpunk 2020 campaign (now almost four years ago), one player joined a few sessions in and chose to play a character working for the villain. She tried to infiltrate the group of the other PCs, and the group quickly found her out, kidnapped her, and took her to their warehouse hideout for interrogation.  

However, those characters as a group were extremely dysfunctional, and it led to an extremely comedic scene where mid-interrogation, they got into a fight with each other. So everyone rolled initiative and we did a silly combat scene where a couple of the PCs were beating each other up while the captured PC was using her moves to try to stealthily untie herself from a chair and try to sneak out.

I think of it fondly for a few reasons: one is that Cyberpunk 2020 combat is extremely lethal, so it was fun to have the players trying to figure out how to make their actions work not as well as they could so they didn't accidentally kill each other. I also just love moments where the whole group knows that they are making a fun, ridiculous story choice instead of an optimized or “correct” one, and everyone leaned in hard in that moment. And it was one of the first times this group of relatively-new-to-roleplaying players made that kind of choice! So it felt like a kind of lovely growth moment.

ask game to hype other people’s ttrpgs »

[s-che]

Fool, Choice, and/or Hermit for the tarot asks?

The Fool – What do the earliest stages of work on a game look like for you? OR How did you get into game design?

I first got into game design in middle school, when I audited a course on game theory from... I think maybe a local community college? I was homeschooled for a couple of years, so I was always a little uncertain where the various curriculums were coming from, but there was definitely a year where on top of the regular middle school stuff I was taking asynchronous virtual courses in visual art and games stuff. Didn't actually start tinkering with designing my own games until late high school, when I wrote a pretty bad but fortunately minimalist d20 roll-under spy RPG which I ran for some friends at writing camp. Then in college I wrote a couple of bad indie games discourse infused games which I think I've successfully scrubbed from the internet, and then in 2022 when I decided I hated my job and channelled all my energy into posting random shit on itch instead. I think each of those moments could be credibly be called how I got into game design.

The Choice — Which do you prefer: drafting or editing? Design or playtesting? Beginning projects or ending projects? Fluff or mechanics? Or a pair of your own invention.

Much prefer playtesting to design. As fun as it is to go anywhere, the technical task of taking an object and figuring out what it / is not working and then finding solutions is much more interesting to me than the total flexibility of beginning from nothing. I'm definitely one of those people who needs restrictions before I can start writing anything at all.

The Hermit — What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned about game design? OR Are you interested in collaborating with others?

Just gonna plug again that I love working with other people so much and you should hire me to write for your game Uhhh biggest lesson, hmm. I think knowing what a project is not is as important as figuring out what it is. There's a bad impulse — informed by the hacking culture of games, I think — to bake "you could do the thing this game is about, or, idk, something else I guess" into the text of your game. You're a lot better off writing a game which has a strong identity and trusting that if it's cool enough, people are going to disregard what you've written to make it a game about everything else. You don't have to offer textual approval for the innate plasticity of the universe.

[svartalfhild]

40 and 59!

40. Mary On A Cross by Ghost

It's been a very Ghost year. There's a lot of Ghost in my top songs. They're actually #3 on my top artists.

59. Gefion by Christian Reindl

It's just a good ass orchestral piece.

[ostrichmonkey-games]

The Ostrichmonkey Hack

Hey, its out!

Behold, the Basic Rules iteration of my personal NSR/OSR ruleset.

This ruleset came to life when I needed something to run an Into the Cess & Citadel campaign, and decided to take a stab at cobbling something together. It ended up being a mix of different N/OSR conventions I liked, plus some other twists to fit my own personal preferences.

Fundamentally, its a "roll under your attribute" system, and should be broadly compatible with your favorite NSR/OSR/minimalist rulesets and adventures. Made with fantasy-adventure stuff in mind, but with some bending, could probably be made to work with other genres.

So let's get into what's inside.

This first release covers the Basic Rules;

Classless character creation

Rolling the dice

Items

Characters have no defined class, and are made up of a Knack and a Domain. Knacks cover any special abilities and skill you might have, and are activated by spending attribute points (and typically circumvent rolling the dice - spend the points and do the thing!). Knacks are specifically inspired by how Whitehack's Wise class casts "miracles". Domains are broad fields of knowledge and understanding.

Like I said, rolling the dice involves rolling under your attribute score, but there is also a way to apply full/mixed successes to a roll. These rules also cover things like combat. Enemies are immune to damage unless you can target a weakness, meaning that the bulk of combat is about trying to discover and exploit an enemy's weakness.

For the items section of the ruleset, I ended up adapting some of the mechanics I'm developing for Stampede Wasteland, specifically the abstracted resources and money. Gear is also one of the main ways you can change your stats by altering everything from HP to your attributes.

The long term plan for this ruleset is to continuously update and tinker with it, adding in extra subsystems, mechanics, and whatever else I feel is interesting at the time. There's no set schedule for this, so expect updates eventually and whenever.

Right now, you can pick up a text only version of the Basic Rules, which will always remain free (scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the demo files, including character sheet), and then the paid files will be getting the major updates.

First planned update is to finish up the Archetype rules to introduce a class system that can replace or be used alongside knacks. So look for that down the road.

Anyways, go check it out!

[ostrichmonkey]

speaking of Lackadaisy, @wolfynsong had the delightful idea of hitting our Edge of the Empire pcs with the jazz cat beam

(extra funny because the whole crew is already a group of furry aliens, plus one astromech droid)

(left to right characters belong to me, @wolfynsong, @oneplusoneequalsfish, @thesnarkknight)

[almsivii]

ttrpg folks ! looking for some recommendations !

my group is starting a new game set in a magical university, and we'd really like to do a collaborative worldbuilding session to flesh out the details of the school. i'm having a hard time finding an appropriate worldbuilding game to use or adapt, so if you've got any ideas please share ! we don't really have much of a setting beyond "magical university" right now, so anything helps.

(the game is arcanademia by @ostrichmonkey-games btw! very fun read and we're really excited to play)

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played DEATHGRIND!!MEGASTRUCTURE ?

By @ostrichmonkey-games

Play as different POST_human FORMATS as you delve the dangerous LAYERS of the TOWER megastructure and explore the factions of the CTY_enclave, the massive habitat on a crash course through the TOWER as it flees the ever-encroaching FRACTALDEATHMACHINE.

[ladytabletop]

4. RPG with Great Art

Oh geez oh no there's too many to count!

I have an entire folder just called "for looking at" (which i also often play, but you know)

DEATHGRIND!! MEGASTRUCTURE by @ostrichmonkey is a favorite to look at. great use of monochrome.

Inevitable by Soulmuppet Publishing has just a wonderful, wistful style that very well marries the arthurian with the western.

Extreme Meatpunks Forever by Heather Flowers is choc-full of amazing, vibrat art.

.dungeon by snow really understands its position as an old forum with lo-fi graphics.

Necronautilus by World Champ Game Co. is one of Adam Vass's best, in my opinion. His art is always chaotic and the singular nature of every spread in this one really sings.

I could go on!

[ratwavegamehouse]

What People Are Saying About PSYCHODUNGEON

"Psychodungeon does what some of the best Belonging Outside Belonging games do, which is create a setting that is a powerful mirror to our own, and then weave that setting into the very marrow of the game. The setting, its dungeons, clients, and psychoplumbers are inescapable in the best way possible because you don’t want to escape it. You want to dive in and see and feel everything that the postdungeon city of Glyndain has to offer. And then come out the other side changed by the experience." - Josh Hittie/Ostrichmonkey Games (Vibe Check and DEATHGRIND!!MEGASRUCTURE!!)

"Well-designed playbooks seamlessly fuse fantasy archetypes with honest descriptions of the stations of career." - Lyme (The Lurking Fear TTRPG)

"'A perfect medley of magic and mundanity" - ReprobateGamer

"PSYCHODUNGEON is a post-Blairite, post-Dungeon, modernist nightmare laced with hope. Imagine if the adventuring party sent to accompany you into the labyrinth spawned from your traumatic past are employed by the same company who decided to skimp on COVID protections for their care homes as it made more money than ensuring nobody living in them died, and overseen by the government department tasked with making sure nurses are as overworked/underpaid as possible. Sure, this band will try their best to help (most of the time). But also, their lives are hard as fuck. They are gonna be messy and imperfect and it is going to get weird somewhere along the line. Truthfully, I'm surprised this game didn't first appear as a strip in 2000AD." - Tanya Floaker (The Connection Machine, Solstice, Be Seeing You)

[temporalhiccup]

Probably b/c I am on a huge fitd kick, but that resident evil inspired fitd has me *intrigued*

(from this WiP post!)

My partner @experimentego is keen on making a Resident Evil fan game for a friend, and we've been chatting about what that could look like!

Here are some notes I wrote down while thinking through the possibilities:

What are the characters doing? -> Survival Horror (RE invented the genre)

With Survival Horror death must always be close, but character death is boring in TTRPGs -> Every time you die (or perhaps to stave off death?) what if a part of your body becomes corrupted by the virus (body horror elements of RE?) -> Could be different per playbook?

A blend of both PbtA & FitD? PbtA is programmable, but FitD feels the strongest (narrative position and effect to set the survival horror stakes, resistance to push back and keep going, etc)

RE Characters don't feel archetypical, instead they feel modular. Brinkwood/Twilight Throne approach?

ACTIONS -> Mental (observe, "cunning", something about puzzles and putting them together?) Physical (Shoot, Brawl, Mobility/Running)

Premise of the game should be newbie friendly, design should be kept simple and light, easy to pick up, approachable (I was thinking of Matthew's friend in mind here since he doesn't have much experience in TTRPGs and I tend to design complex games haha)

FLASHBACKS - roleplay/narrative opportunity; instead of flashbacking to what you did before the mission, instead it's their life before they had to survive the horde/situation. What gives them the strength to go on? The means to survive? What will they lose as they transform and change?

The main reason I haven't worked on this game in earnest is that I know I'll have to play RE to really do the game justice and I'm really bad at horror video games haha. (I did play a lot of RE in my youth but I'm older and, uh, yeah I just don't willingly put myself through horror games really!)

That being said, Matthew's been thinking of drilling down to a particular type of RE experience, so that might mean focusing on just one game in the series and building from there. Since I'm mostly here to support Matthew's design that might make it doable for me to go back to work on!

[theresattrpgforthat]

This might be a long winded question, but for a while I’ve brainstorming on and off ideas for a TTRPG system based on those stories about “secret worlds where you have different abilities when you enter them” (Persona, Deltarune, Omori, more I’m sure), and I was thinking “there’s gotta be an RPG for that”, so like… is there? Is there an RPG where you enter a secret world to influence and help things in the real world? Or enter a secret world and develop special abilities when you do?

THEME: Alternate Worlds

Hello there! The Persona series is one I'm tangentially familiar with, so I've mostly got games that list it or The World Ends With You in their references. I've noticed that the PbtA community (and its siblings) really seems to like this genre.

Heartbeats in Perfect Sync, by Nathan Blades.

In your city, there’s an otherworldly force that lurks in the hearts of many: The Pulse. Feeding on negative emotions, they’ll devour everything… if not for a group of ordinary people with a mysterious app installed on their phones. Activate the app and you’ll be bestowed with a weapon that can purge the Pulse, but opening your heart can be dangerous…

Heartbeats in Perfect Sync is a tabletop RPG inspired by the shounen battle aesthetic in games like The World Ends With You, Kingdom Hearts and Under Night In-Birth. Play as a group of ordinary people who fight monsters with ridiculously over-the-top weapons.

Character creation in this game looks to be wonderfully simple. You fill in a ad-lib style sentence with information about your job, your weapon, and your fighting style. You pick a special move, and mark your Heart Rate, which marks your emotions. Your Heart Rate can grow or shrink, but get too close to either end of the spectrum, and your character becomes a dark version of themselves, super-powered and extremely cool-looking. If you like dramatic moments and rule-of-cool fight scenes, this game is for you.

The Midnight Generation, by Five Points Games.

The Midnight Generation is a rules hack for Masks: A New Generation by Magpie Games inspired by the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series of JRPGs. Take the role of teenagers thrust into mystery and conflict. Explore the cognitive landscape of The Midnight World, the realm made by the collective unconscious of humanity and the distortions that arise when people retreat from reality. Take control of powerful Facades, spiritual manifestations of one's true self to battle powerful Shadows, willful manifestations of human emotions and to overcome the trials set forth in The Midnight Generation!

If you are a fan of MASKS, but want to use the original rules in an alternate setting, The Midnight Generation might be worth looking at. This book is fairly comprehensive - it comes with guidance on how to create the people, places, and other elements necessary to play in a Persona-like universe, as well as a city you can pick up and use with little extra effort. Another thing I really appreciate about this supplement is the addition of 10 playbooks that communicate the themes and struggles of Persona characters, including the Icon, who is masking their true self from the world around them, and the Shadow, how was born in the other world from the emotions of mankind.

Vibe Check, by Ostrichmonkey Games. (@ostrichmonkey-games)

Vibe Check is an illuminated by LUMEN tabletop role-playing game for 3-6 players.  Players take on the roles of Players in the Watcher's Game - a week long challenge with the prize being another shot at life, while another player takes on the role of the Game's Master to introduce complications and consequences the Players must overcome as they fight to survive the Watcher's Game. 

Vibe Check features LUMEN's fast paced dice pool system, tailored for action filled combat and paired with plenty of powers and cool abilities. Fight the Pandemonium within the Inversion to earn new Tokens and rewards. Upgrade and buy more powerful gear. Survive the Watcher's Game. 

Inspired by The World Ends With You, Vibe Check places your players in a high-stakes afterlife competition to become alive again. As members of the afterlife, you’ll receive special abilities attached to your archetypes. For example, the Cryptic archetype had an ability called False Gnosis, which allows them to state something and roll to see if what they said was true. Your character’s looks are also important to determining their stats, with each Look belonging to a Brand. Do you have an entire set of clothes bought from Antiquity’s Glance? Now you can carry more things on your person.

If you like games with moddable upgrades and simple (but rewarding) combat, then Vibe Check is for you.

Eidolon: Become Your Best Self, by Reveal Your Master Plan.

EIDOLON: Become Your Best Self is a Powered by the Apocalypse RPG in which your character gains the power of an Eidolon, a physical manifestation of their soul that reflects their truest, innermost self and grants them incredible reality-defying powers! With the help of their friends, they'll fight against the pressure of the Undertow, the shadowy flow of collective psychic energy that imprisons society in an untenable status quo.

While this is a PbtA game, Eidolon has a battle system that uses a mechanic called “crashes”. Every blow that you land will escalate the fight, with victory becoming less and less likely the longer the fight draws out. This requires creativity and teamwork to overcome, drawing from your collective resources to save the day.

If you want to hear this game in action, the designers have an Eidolon Playtest podcast where they play through various seasons of Eidolon.

Shifters, by Moonlit Bard.

You are a Shifter, someone who can step from our world into the Major World beyond to do battle with sentient emotions and compulsions known as Forms.

Forms can be malevolent spirits inciting violence, landscapes saturated with desire, objects that seethe with chaos and discord, or anthropomorphic personifications of envy. No matter their appearance, they spell disaster for our world, and only you can stop them.

There’s not much info I have for this game, other than that it’s in demo form and is currently a one-page RPG. However, if you’re interested in games where emotions have power in an alternate world and so far nothing on the list here is speaking to you, this might give you something light enough to hack to your heart’s desire.

Stand Up, by Elena Murphy.

Stand Up is a Belonging Outside Belonging game about rebellion, forming bonds, fighting injustice, and changing the world.

Take on the roles of normal people with the capability to become heroes, explore a fantastical world that houses mankind’s inner feelings, and find a way to fight back using power only you can wield.

If you are a big fan of the Persona series, this game is for you. Collaboratively build a hidden world, called The Reversal, formed from the perceptions and feelings of humanity. Choose from a set of seven playbooks, all named after tarot cards. Bind your characters together, and then determine your Setting Elements.

Because this is a Belonging Outside Belonging game, Stand Up has no GM. Instead, it has setting elements that are picked up and played by players whose characters are not active in any given scene. This keeps the entire table engaged in the story even when their character isn’t involved, and lightens the burdens of GM-ing while giving everyone an equal chance to contribute to the story. If you enjoy story-games and a lot of control over when your character succeeds or fails, Stand Up is worth checking out.

Voidheart Symphony, by UFO Press.

There’s a wound in the world, a rot eating at hope and community and empathy. You’ve seen it in dark alleyways and gleaming boardrooms, gifting terrible power to those who will use it to hurt others.

You’ve had enough. You’re going to dive through that wound into the nightmare castle on the other side. You’re going to find the avatar of the one bringing you misery, and strike them down.

But what’s next, once you’ve stolen their power and ruined their ambitions? Will you return to your daily grind? Cherish those who are close to you? Or revel in the power you have taken from the void? Because within that wound, the castle waits, and it is hungry.

Voidheart Symphony is a tabletop roleplaying game about mundane people diving into a demon-filled labyrinth to save the ones they love. Based on Apocalypse World and Rhapsody of Blood, it’ll fill your story with dramatic choices and dynamic action. The World and the Void will both offer you their power, and make their own demands. How will you strike that balance? What will your revolution fight for? That’s your story to tell.

This is probably one of the darkest games on this list. With an alternate world that is meant to trap your characters and pit them against demons all the while, this is a game about rebellion in the face of little to no hope. I’ve heard a lot about this game in a number of different circles - it is well-loved and well-played. If you want to take a look at some pieces of this game before you buy, the Itch page includes free playbooks and reference sheets, as well as a link to a Google Sheets Character Keeper!

[psychhound]

dear indie ttrpg devs

i have a student in my composition class who would like to interview a ttrpg dev for our profile unit, but didnt know who to reach out to or how. anyone on here who wouldnt mind being interviewed for a college class? the sooner i could hear back the better so that i can give the student some options :D

tagging some folks i can think of under the read more, if you want to be removed please tell me!!

@theresattrpgforthat @ladytabletop @crackerjackalope @ostrichmonkey-games @pandiongames @sprintingowl @junkfoodgames @runningdoggames @zakbfree

[svartalfhild]

52, 88, 9

52. Nothing Is Ever What It Seems by Midtown

88. A Walk in the Skies by Joe Hisaishi

9. The Change by Evanescence