#rpg actual play

[open-hearth-rpg]

#Nahual Open Hearth Gaming Videos

Over the many years we have accumulated a large collection of actual play videos for a ton of different games-- both in our previous community incarnation and our new form. We collect these each week and add them to playlists on our Open Hearth Gaming Community YouTube site.

You can see all those playlists here: https://www.youtube.com/@OpenHearthGaming/playlists?view=1&sort=dd&shelf_id=0

For example, we have 17 sessions of Nahual available for folks to watch. These are unedited, raw play from the table-- and a great chance to see what the game's like.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjWnuWTlTzYBnupqbNVCWxylYwFphorKg

We have hundreds off different games and series there for everyone to check out. You can subscribe to be updated as we add new sessions.

[maxer-blaster]

I need TTRPG Actual Play recommendations.

I'm looking for compelling stories, engaging characters and I wanna FEEL THINGS.

My Favorite Actual plays that I have watched are Dimension 20: Fantasy High. Fantasy High Sophmore Year and Mentopolis.

[prokopetz]

One of the most common questions I get about my games is "can I play as this? can I play as that?", and I'll level with you: basically every game I write is about a narrowly focused experience, so if you're the sort of player who's afflicted with the contrarian urge to insist on playing a character who's the exact opposite of whatever type of character a game is notionally about, regardless of what type of character that is, you're probably not gonna have a good time.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Help Save the World of TTRPGs and Their Creators.

Okay I’m being a little dramatic, but at the same time I’m pretty serious. This is a call to action, and the livelihoods of myself and lots of other people, many of them (like myself) disabled, are depending on it. This is a post about why, what you can do about it, and (perhaps least often answered) how.

This post is actually an accompaniment to another discussion by someone else. If you don’t want to listen to a 90-minute in-depth discussion of much of what I’m about to tell you, you can just keep reading. Otherwise, click here or here and listen to this either before or after you read this post. (They’re the same thing, just different sources.)

If you have ever made or reblogged posts urging people to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox, you should be willing to at least give a try to other TTRPGs besides D&D5e for much the same principle reasons. I’m not telling you you have to hate D&D5e, and I’m not telling you you have to quit D&D5e, I’m just asking you to try some other games. If you don’t like them, and you really want to go back to D&D5e, then go back to D&D5e. But how can you really know you won’t like other games if you have literally never tried them? This post is a post about why and how to try them. If you’re thinking right now that you don’t want to try them, I urge you to look below to see if any of your reasons for not wanting to try them are covered there. Because the monopoly that WotC’s D&D5e has on TTRPGs as a whole is bad for me as a game designer, and it’s bad for you as a game player. It’s even bad for you if you like D&D5e. A fuller discussion of the why and how this is the case can be found in the links above, but it isn’t fully necessary for understanding this post, it’ll just give you a better perspective on it.

If you’re a D&D5e player, I’m sure at some point or another, you’ve been told “play a different game”, and it must get frustrating without the context of why and how. This post is here to give you the why and how.

[The following paragraph has been edited because the original wording made it sound like we think all weird TTRPGs suck.]

Before that though, one more thing to get out of the way. I'm going to level with you. There’s a lot of weird games out there.

You are gonna see a lot of weird TTRPGs when you take the plunge. Many of them try to completely reinvent what a TTRPG even is, and some fail spectacularly, others really do even up doing something very interesting even if they don't end up being what a core TTRPG player wants. But not every indie RPG is a Bladefish, lots and lots of them are more 'traditional' and will feel very familiar to you, I promise. (And you might even find that you like the weird experimental bladefish type ones, these are usually ideal for one-session plays when your usual group can't play your usual game for any reason.)

You're also going to probably see a lot of very bad games, and man have I got some stories of very bad games, but for now I'm just saying to make sure you read the reviews, or go through curators (several of which will be listed below), before you buy.

Now that that is out of the way, I’m going to go down a list of concerns you may have for why not, and then explain the how.

“I don’t want to learn a whole new set of rules after I already spent so much time learning D&D5e.”

Learning a new set of rules is not going to be as hard as you think. Most other TTRPGs aren’t like that. D&D5e is far on the high end of the scale for TTRPGs being hard and time-consuming to learn and play. If you’ve only played D&D5e, it might trick you into thinking that learning any TTRPG is an overwhelmingly time-consuming task, but this is really mostly a D&D5e problem, not a TTRPG problem as a whole.

“D&D5e has all of these extra online tools to help you play it.”

So what? People have been playing TTRPGs without the help of computers for 50 years. To play a well-designed TTRPG you won’t need a computer. Yes, even if you're bad at math. There are some TTRPGs out there that barely even use math.

“I’m too invested in the narrative and characters of my group’s current ongoing D&D5e campaign to switch to something else.”

There are other games, with better design made by better people for less money, that are the same kind of game as D&D5e, that your current characters, lore, and plot will fit right into and do it better. And no, it's not just Pathfinder, there's others.

“I can’t afford to play another TTRPG.”

You probably can. If you’ve only played D&D5e, you might have been made to think that TTRPGs are a very expensive hobby. They aren’t. D&D5e is actually uniquely expensive, costing more than 3x more than the next most expensive TTRPG I can think of right now. Even on the more expensive end, other TTRPG books will cost you no more than $60, most will cost you less than $20, and a whole lot of them are just free. If you somehow still can’t afford another TTRPG, come to the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book club mentioned below, nominate the game, and if it wins the vote we will straight up buy it for you.

(By the way, if you had any of the above concerns about trying other games besides D&D5e, that really makes it sound like you are in a textbook abusive relationship with D&D5e. This is how abusers control their partners, and how empires control their citizens, by teaching you to think that nothing could ever get any better, and even though they treat you bad, the Other will treat you even worse.)

“If I don’t play D&D5e, which TTRPG should I play?”

That’s a pretty limited question to be asking, because there will be no one TTRPG for everything. And no, D&D5e is not the one TTRPG for everything, Hasbro’s marketing team is just lying to you. (Pathfinder and PbtA are not the one system for everything either!) Do you only play one video game or only watch one movie or only read one book? When you finish watching an action movie like Mad Max, and then you want to watch a horror movie, do you just rewind Mad Max and watch it over again but this time you act scared the whole time? No, you watch a different movie. I’m asking you to give the artistic medium of TTRPGs the same respect you would give movies.

“I want to play something besides D&D5e, but my friends won’t play anything else!”

I have several answers to this.

Try showing them this post.

If that doesn’t work: Make them. Put your foot down. This works especially well if you are the DM. Tell them you won’t run another session of D&D5e until they agree to give what you want to do at least one try instead of always doing only what they want to do. This is, like, playing 101. We learned this in kindergarten. If your friend really wants to play something else, you should give their game a try, or you’re not really being a very good friend.

If that doesn’t work, find another group. This doesn’t even mean that you have to leave your existing group. A good place to start would be the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club which will be mentioned and linked below. You can also go to the subreddit of any game you’re interested in and probably meet people there who have the same problem you do and want to put together a group to play something other than D&D5e. You might get along great with these people, you might not, but you won’t know until you try. Just make sure to have a robust “session zero” so everyone is on the same page. This is a good practice for any group but it is especially important for a group made of players you’ve just met.

“I only watch actual plays.”

Then watch actual plays of games that aren’t D&D5e. These podcasts struggle for the same reasons that indie RPGs struggle, because of the brand recognition and brand loyalty D&D5e has, despite their merit. I don’t watch actual plays, or else I would be able to list more of them. So, anyone who does watch actual plays, please help me out by commenting on this post with some non-D&D5e actual plays you like. And please do me a favor and don’t list actual plays that only play one non-D&D5e system, list ones that go through a variety of systems. The first one I can think of is Tiny Table.

“I can just homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e.”

Even though I want to, I’m not going to try and argue that you can’t actually homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e. Instead, I’m going to ask you why you’re buying two $50 rulebooks just to throw away half the pages. In most other good RPGs, you don’t need to change the rules to make them fun, they’re fun right out the box.

“But homebrewing D&D5e into any kind of game is fun! You can homebrew anything out of D&D5e!”

Firstly, I promise that this is not unique to D&D5e. Secondly, then you would probably have more fun homebrewing a system that gives you a better starting point for reaching your goal. Also, what if I told you that there are entire RPG systems out there that are made just for this? There are RPG systems that were designed for the purpose of being a toolbox and set of materials for you to work with to make exactly the game you want to make. Some examples are GURPS, Savage Worlds, Basic RolePlaying, Caltrop Core, and (as much as I loathe it) PbtA.

“I’m not supporting WotC’s monopoly because I pirate all the D&D5e books.”

Then you’re still not supporting the smaller developers that this monopoly is crushing, either.

Now, here’s the how. Because I promise you, there’s not just one, but probably a dozen other RPGs out there that will scratch your exact itch.

Here’s how to find them. This won’t be a comprehensive list because I’ve already been typing this for like 3 hours already. Those reading this, please go ahead and comment more to help fill out the list.

First, I’m gonna plug one of my own major projects, because it’s my post. The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club. It’s a discord server that treats playing TTRPGs like a book club, with the goal of introducing members to a wide variety of games other than D&D5e. RPGs are nominated by members, then we hold a vote to decide what to read and play for a short campaign, then we repeat. There is no financial, time, or schedule investment required to join this book club, I promise it is very schedule-friendly, because we assign people to different groups based of schedule compatibility. You don’t have to play each campaign, or any campaign, you can just read along and participate in discussion that way. And if you can’t afford to buy the rulebook we’re going to be reading, we will make sure you get a PDF of it for free. That is how committed we are to getting non-D&D5e RPGs into people’s hands. Here is an invite link.

Next, there are quite a few tumblr blogs you can follow to get recommendations shown to you frequently.

@indierpgnewsletter

@indie-ttrpg-of-the-day

@theresattrpgforthat

@haveyouplayedthisttrpg

@indiepressrevolution

Plenty of podcasts, journalists, and youtubers out there do in-depth discussions of different systems regularly, a couple I can think of off the top of my head are:

Storyteller Conclave (I’m actually going to be interviewed live on this show on April 10th!)

Seth Skorkowsky

Questing Beast

The Gaming Table

Rascal News

Lastly, you can just go looking. Browse r/rpg, drivethrurpg.com, indie press revolution, and itch.io.

Now, if you really want to support me and my team specifically Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is going to launch on Kickstarter on April 10th and we need all the help we can get. Set a reminder from the Kickstarter page through this link.

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, there’s plenty of ways to get one!

Subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

Donate to our ko-fi and send us an email with proof that you did, and we’ll email you back with the full Eureka prerelease package with the most updated version at the time of responding! (The email address can be found if you scroll down to the bottom of our website.)

We also have merchanise.

[transplanarrpg]

i started using ta/ta de pronouns for some of my chinese NPCs in chaos and it’s just so fucking… *chef’s kiss* DIASPORIC GENDER

anyway i HIGHLY recommend using neopronouns, and, fuck it, fantastical and magical pronouns for your tabletop characters. give me class-specific pronouns. guild-specific pronouns. pronouns reserved for certain deities, rituals, sacrifices; pronouns given after great deeds or profanities are committed; pronouns stolen, enchanted, embellished, gifted

[nightjar-games]

For this weekend's dive through the archives, "The Forest Depths" by Urisdice. This is an odd one, as I wasn't involved in that zine project in any way, I just really liked it, and wanted to make a little AP comic of the first section of the game.

Also, "Tritone" may be the best pun name I've ever come up with.

[robindaydream]

It's fine. Everything's normal. Just regular friend moments.

(generated with this handy little tool)

[goblincow]

Rascal News is well worth your money:

Well it's been a month. I waited and watched and thought ah you know if the lowest sub was less than $5 then maybe just maybe. But I did want to support because Rascal is setting a course for the direction TTRPGs as an arts industry can be steered in, whether I personally am on board or not (though my funds would certainly help).

Like I said, it's been a month, and they've now implemented pay-per-article if there's something you want to see or you can't justify $5 – which is a pretty smart move considering "paywall tho" is the thought terminating refrain in the twitter replies and one of Rascal's stated intents is to do more Real Important Journalism in an industry rife with corporate exploitation and abuses of power, which is the sort of news that needs both funding and low access to entry.

It's also worth saying that their articles are a good read.

"While there are still some crunchier elements to the final product (exemplifying what AP scholar Dr. Emily Friedman refers to as the medium’s “ambitious middle”), the subtle production details and the highly intentional performances in GUDIYA are a beacon of what is artistically possible for video-born actual plays."

"GUDIYA (the Hindi word for doll) overwhelmingly plays into the horror of not only its source material, but the horror of being both a woman and South Asian in the highly gendered and xenophobic world of the English Empire."

I've now signed up at $50 for the year, or £3.29 each month which is Really Quite Good, so for your consideration I wanted to share the article that made me commit (above) plus a couple of choice picks for tumblr:

[sirobvious]

Every D&D5e player needs to take a listen to this with an open mind.

Here are other links in case you don't want to listen to it through YouTube.

[probablybadrpgideas]

Ah.

Ok, no need to panic. As long as you don’t look in the tags, we’re golden. You can do that, right?

Hmm, yeah, I see the issue. You want to look at the tags now. Who can blame you? So how about I sweeten the deal? You take this natural 20 and maybe you “forget” to look at the tags, huh? You’re happy, I’m happy, everyone wins.

We got a deal? Glad to hear it.

Have a nice day, pal.

-Pencil

[open-hearth-rpg]

Welcome to the Open Hearth Gaming video roundup!

These recorded sessions represent only a portion of the games we play every week, and anyone is welcome to join the fun! If you'd like to play in games like these, join our Playabl community and click on the "Calendar" tab to sign up for upcoming games. To browse our entire library of session videos, please visit our YouTube Playlists page.

Open Hearth Gaming Calendar

Monster of the Week: The Rockies (Session 6) Blake Ryan runs for David Montgomery, Dom, and Grey Cult comes calling

Trail of Cthulhu: Fearful Symmetries: Arc Two (Session 1) Lowell Francis runs for Alun R., Paul Rivers, Sherri, and Will H A year has passed and our investigators have dealt with the trauma and cost of dispatching the Dragon in different ways. But when an old debt is called in, Richard must re-assemble the group to look into the mysterious death of a member of the Rollright Coven.

Trail of Cthulhu: Fearful Symmetries: Arc Two (Session 2) Lowell Francis runs for Alun R., Paul Rivers, Sherri, and Will H The circle continues their investigation of the happenings at Convivial House. Talking to locals they begin to put together a picture of events happening in the two Quintons. Richard remains at the house overnight and has a vision of the hungry darkness lying to the north. Eventually they begin to piece together a picture of the sinister events surrounding Bradbury House and the grove which lies upon its grounds.

Tomorrow City (Session 1 of 2) Lowell Francis runs for Bryan, Cale P, Jo Lene, and Robyn Choi The first half of a two-part series of Tomorrow City, a new dieselpunk TTRPG from Osprey. We set up characters, jump into the action, and afterwards give the crew their new assignment.

Tomorrow City (Session 2 of 2) Lowell Francis runs for Bryan, Cale P, Jo Lene, and Robyn Choi The second half of a two-part series of Tomorrow City, a new dieselpunk TTRPG from Osprey. Our heroes develop, reject, and settle on what could loosely be called a plan. We spend some time with the characters before they execute their dangerous mission-- where nothing goes exactly as hoped.

Godbound: Sundered Cycles (Session 27) Lowell Francis runs for Dan Brown, Ethan Harvey, Patrick Knowles, Sherri, and Tyler Lominack In the aftermath of their defeat of the Angels, the pantheon considers what to do with Neeharik and the nation of Geznya as a whole. Ransom and Ivesro work to calm and organize the citizenry, and then look to the wild sorcery schools. Darius begins to find their place in all of this. Threadless constructs on several levels. Tasos tries to organize his found family and begins to extends the dreamscape.

Against the Monster Andrea Rick runs for Madelancholy, Robbie Boerth, and Sabine V. A story game about a monster hunt, the good of the monster, and the monstrosity of the hunters (currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter). We hunt a ghost in a desert and muse about loss, rage, and memory.

Godbound: Sundered Cycles (Session 28) Lowell Francis runs for Ethan Harvey, Patrick Knowles, Sherri, and Tyler Lominack The pantheon looks to decide on next steps, as we see each god interact with NPCs and more. Ransom meets with representatives of the allied pantheon and extends his dominion. Tasos speaks with a scholar of souls and anoints his feline followers. Darius decides to build a shrine and looks to get interns. Threadless decides to build a dragon, or an angel, or both.

Star Wars Saturday

Fellowship: A Fellowship in Rebellion Rich Rogers runs for Cody Eastlick, Greg G., Kae, Steven Watkins, and Tyler Lominack

Off-Calendar Highlights

Trophy Dark: The Forbidden Archives (Session 1 of 2) Madelancholy runs for David S., Gabriel Robinson, Robyn Choi, and Tentacle Duck (Sandra) Knowledge hunters seek to enter the lost Azure Archives, doing terrible things to find out where it is, and most likely delving deeper in their own darkness to capture the secrets within.

Trophy Dark: The Forbidden Archives (Session 2 of 2) Madelancholy runs for David S., Gabriel Robinson, Robyn Choi, and Tentacle Duck (Sandra) Interconnected, secrets revealed by the Azure Archives making more demands of the intruders than they can steal away. Who will survive but be forever changed, and who will be lost, never to leave the Archives?

[varilien]

(character uses he/they)

recently got to give bg3 a try n kinda just used it as an excuse to work on a design ive been struggling with. reminds me a lot of making murder lizards in skyrim as a middle schooler it's fun :3

[xbuster]

WRONG! I play Dragon Quest games over and over and over again because I fucking LOVE JRPG combat.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Alright everyone listen up, I am aggregating names and establishments to send the Eureka review package to within the next couple of weeks. could y’all tell me the names of rpg news outlets, rpg youtubers, rpg podcasters(regular talk podcasts or actual plays), bloggers, and anyone else that could get Eureka in front of an audience?

[partyofonepod]

HELLO HI WE ARE NAMEDROPPED ON POLYGON DOT COM TODAY

AS ONE OF THE BEST ACTUAL PLAY PODCASTS NOT PLAYING D&D

EXCUSE ME WHILE I SCREAM

[superdillin]

Howdy heroes! Do me a favor and go check out the latest two tracks on the One Shot Podcast feed, then come back here. I'll wait.

Announcement: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3eXK8zYsUrGUPyMYo7djP7...

....

....

....

....

Ok great - gang, I'm really excited to tell you that I am the new host for One Shot! James has made an incredible legacy out of this actual play series, featuring over 160 games across over 500 episodes - and now I'm taking over to bring you even more games with a new cast every month.

If you've heard me speak at all over the last several years, you know that rpgs, this gorgeous art form, has become my entire heart and soul. I think about how these games have changed my life every single day. And now I have the extreme privilege of sharing them with this amazing audience.

The other candidates for this role were not only amazing, but some of my favorite people in this creative space. They are all talented and driven and remarkable, and I can't believe my name was even listen beside them. Not only that, I don't think I've ever been in a competitive place so genuinely supportive? We came out of this lifelong fans of one another.

If you are a One Shot fan who is just getting to know me, hi! I'm literally thrilled to get to know you, I hope you will continue loving this show with me at the helm. I'm all ears for your wishes and feedback.

If you know my work but are new to One Shot, let me tell you, you will love this show. It's funny and charming and full of heart, take a look at that backlog of games and listen to one that sounds interesting to you!

And if you are James D'Amato, thank you, you delightful nerd, for making something so precious and trusting me with it. I look forward to hugging you about it as soon as we can.

I also MUST thank the wonderful editor of One Shot, Tracy Barnett, for being the most welcoming and supportive collaborator in this process. I feel at home working with you already, friend.

And that's it! Go listen to our series of I Have the High Ground, the first part is out now!

IHtHG part One: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Oxc13QX2II5wHXWLWqefe...