#slugblaster

[sapphirecrook]

A good TTRPG system is like a vehicle. Or a tool. And like a good tool, it has a purpose, and things get weird if you start using it outside of that.

You don't do the Tour de France on an omafiets. You don't use a screwdriver on a Torx bolt. You don't drive a Nissan Leaf offroad up a mountain. You don't make your desk chair out of straight, flat shapes.

I mean, you CAN, but forcing tools benefits nobody. Most people can handle maybe 5%~10% of forcing. When they gotta. But do it more, and it starts to annoy. It stresses the tools. It damages the thing they're making. You strip the screw of its fit, the tool of its shape, the chair of its structure. Everyone loses.

Of course, people who never played a Not-D&D cannot imagine that it's D&D that's bothering them. After all, all they know is hammers. They might know something is wrong, but blame themselves or something. That's why people tell them to play a Not-D&D. Because until they've used a wrench to tighten a bolt, or learned how an socket wrench is GOAT, they won't know how fucking ASS it is to turn a bolt with a goddamn hammer. Turns out, they love fastening them... with a proper tool that doesn't make them pull their hair out.

That was my experience, at least, and it probably saved me from quitting forever.

Gonna give another shoutout to Slugblasters, man is it nice that my players don't need constant fucking reminders and if they do I can just rattle of the 2-5 short rules and... oh, we're done, they know everything. Don't even need to look at their sheets to see their modifiers. No stupid math. Just "what's your highest die" and done.

Like, for real, I'm not running a video game or dungeon thing here, I wanna run some fun hoohaa foolery kickflips, and D&D ain't none of that.

Running D&D in 2024 is like, the player community collectively convinced each other that dungeon crawls, resource management and attrition are bad, so now everyone runs games where characters can expect to get into one or two fights a day and characters are never stretched for resources, and most Reddit threads about D&D are GMs asking for help challenging their groups because of said ignoring of the resource management aspect and getting told that a good GM could make it work so obviously they must be a bad GM.

[dragonkid11]

Slugblaster, by Wilkie's Candy Lab, is a FitD narrative TTRPG about you playing as a bunch of teenage hoverboarders sneaking into other dimensions to explore, film, go viral, and get away from troubles at home.

It's stupid, it got parent groups in a panic, it's the coolest thing ever, and it's called Slugblasting!

[facelessoldgargoyle]

oh at the start of last session of Slugblaster one of my players asked off he could have a second sword instead of a ray gun. I was like…um, ok. Sure? But it will have the stats of a regular sword, not a ray gun, so it won’t be ranged and it won’t have a stun setting. He was like oh ok never mind.

I’m still kind of bemused—what would a ranged sword even be??

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played SLUGBLASTER ?

By Mikey Hamm

"In the small town of Hillview, teenage hoverboarders sneak into other dimensions to explore, film tricks, go viral, and get away from the problems at home. It’s dangerous. It’s stupid. It’s got parent groups in a panic. And it’s the coolest thing ever. This is Slugblaster. A tabletop RPG about teenagehood, giant bugs, circuit-bent rayguns, and trying to be cool." - Taken from the Slugblaster website.

[osteoptimist]

So I've been thinking about narrative mechanics in games, particularly the Beats system in Slugblaster.

For those unfamiliar, I highly recommend watching this Quinns Quest review, Quinns is awesome and he really does play games with his group before reviewing them, usually an 8+ session adventure if not a whole campaign.

Basically Slugblaster is about teenagers riding hoverboards and flipping off cops in other dimensions, drawing a lot of inspiration from skateboarding culture, and it has a big emphasis on a kind of coming-of-age vibe.

One of the core mechanics of the game is the Beats system. Quinns does a better job explaining it than I will, but basically Beats (and especially Arc Beats) are like small structured storylines for your character. They follow a particular theme like family trouble at home, or teenage angst, or a romantic relationship, or signing on with a sponsor.

The Arcs all contain four Beats, and they follow a very familiar story structure. Exposition, rising action, climax, resolution. And that means some of the events are good, and some of them are bad, and there are mechanical incentives for all of it and it's very well done and I want to try it.

BUT. The reason I'm talking about this is because this is something I have wanted from TTRPGs for a long time.

See, I mainly play combat heavy heroic fantasy games, which I previously tried to make work in D&D5e but am now having much more fun with in Draw Steel. There are a great many games in this genre, and they tend to work pretty similarly in a lot of ways, but one thing that almost all of them have in common is that as the adventure goes on, your character is consistently getting stronger.

You face challenges, overcome them, and get rewarded by levelling up and getting new powers, or looting magic items, or getting special benefits awarded by NPCs or whatever. But you are always getting stronger. Outside of rare cases where you lose a magic item or something, you never really get weaker or lose access to powers you've gained.

But in virtually all fantasy media where the characters have magic powers, they don't JUST get stronger as the story goes on. They inevitably have a darkest hour, a lowest point where the combination of their internal conflict and the external opposition seem too great to overcome. Often in these moments, their powers might weaken or stop working entirely, or they might lose control, or they might be afraid to use their power.

And once they emerge from that, they're stronger than ever.

The oaths in the Stormlight Archive series are a great example of this. Spoilers I guess, but look at Kaladin! In Words of Radiance when he strays from his oaths and allows the assassination plot to continue, his bond with Syl weakens and he loses his powers. Once he resolves his inner conflict and commits to protecting even those he hates, he swears the third ideal and gets his powers back.

That is a direct correlation between character growth and character ability. You see this in other media too. Zuko loses his firebending after joining the avatar, and regains it once he fully turns away from his anger and decides to commit himself to restoring balance. In the first Spiderverse movie, Miles struggles the entire time to control his powers and it's only when he overcomes his fear and takes a literal leap of faith that he really takes ownership of his abilities.

And THAT is something I have always wanted in TTRPGs. Tying mechanical advancement, at least in some respects, to the personal growth of your character. Levelling up from fighting monsters and getting stronger from experience is all well and good, but becoming more powerful as a consequence of learning more about who you are, what you stand for, what you believe in? That's the juicy shit right there.

Now, in Slugblaster, these Beats don't usually make your character any more powerful. Some of them can give you access to new abilities, but it's not a game where you become a godlike skater by the end. It's just not a game principally focused on becoming more powerful in order to overcome bigger obstacles. The Beats system in Slugblaster is primarily a way to let gameplay set up character and story moments, in a way that is structured enough to let almost anyone create really compelling journeys of personal growth and yet vague enough to let the story be unique and interesting every time. The Beats you go through also determine your Doom and Legacy, two resources that accrue over the course of the short campaign and are used in a final roll to decide your character's epilogue.

The Beats system, I think, is what makes Slugblaster really work as a game about coming-of-age stories. Without it, it might still be a cool fun game about riding your hoverboard in weird dimensions and trying to go viral with videos of your tricks, but it would take a lot of work from the whole group to really make it into a compelling story. With Beats, the game does all that work for you and gives you a very clear recipe for dramatic and memorable narratives. Again, that might sound restrictive or flat or like it's going to make for very predictable stories, but all it really does is lay out the classic story structure that sticks around because it works.

There's also a lot of potential for tragedy, because you don't have to complete the Arcs. In the class arc for the Grit class, for instance, you spend the first two beats trying to do something really hard, failing, and getting back up determined to try again. In the third beat, you try, you fail, and you give up, because you've been trying so hard and maybe you really just can't do it, no matter how hard you try. We've all been there. And then in the fourth beat, you try one more time, spurred on by the people who believe in you, and you nail it. Amazing! Simple recipe, but an awesome emotional payoff every time.

But you don't need to do the fourth beat. You can just stop after the third, where you give up. If that fourth beat wouldn't make sense, if you don't have the support you need to face up to the potential for failure again, nothing in the game requires you to do it.

And I think that's part of what makes this system really sing. If the Beat would feel forced, just don't do it. So even though the path is laid out, the whole group really does need to work to reach the end. There is a happy ending, but only if you actually do your best to make it happen. Brilliant.

I'm thinking about adapting something like this for Draw Steel, a Chronicle system where you can choose to embark on a character arc for your hero where they will encounter both triumphs and defeat. So in addition to levelling up as you gain Victories, you're also having a personal journey and dealing with inner conflict, and you become more powerful by resolving that as well. These Chronicles would also include their low points, their darkest hour, where they might be less powerful. They might include moments where the hero has conflicts with other party members or NPCs, or makes an unfortunate decision, because those moments are essential for the drama.

I'm still toying with the idea, and deciding how it should work and how it might interface with the rest of the game, but I think it might be interesting.

[hendrik-ten-napel]

Do GMs need support when it comes to getting players in trouble? Isn't that, like, their main thing?

Most games turn over the spotlight to the GM when the players fail a roll, but what about surprise twists and turns? Slugblaster introduces an interesting way to help GMs pace their impact on the story. If you watched Quinns review you know what I'm talking about: bite, the only thing he didn't like about the game. Well, I like it a lot.

Get Hendrik Biweekly delivered to your inbox biweekly.

[teomos]

If there is a game with a premise so specific that you have no idea why anyone would want to play it, that game is probably great.

[tabletoprpgenjoyer]

I hate to say it, but I don't think it's possible to convince D&D players to try other TTRPGs by telling them about Pathfinder. Pathfinder is the same as D&D in basically every way that matters, so telling a D&D player to give it a try will fall flat because they can get an almost identical experience with D&D. There's no reason to play it instead of D&D. It feels like it'd be a lot easier to get someone to try something new when it's an experience that they can't get through D&D. You can't run a Blades in the Dark campaign with D&D, you can't run a Slugblaster campaign with D&D, you can't run a Masks: A New Generation campaign with D&D, so there's a reason for them to try out a different system and get that new experience. I am just yapping now but this is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Quinn's Quest just released their final episode of the year, and it's about Slugblaster!

[penandpaperandpopcorn]

What's cool about Slugblaster (okay, one of many cool things) is the way it inverts the in-character stressfulness of the gameplay from Blades In The Dark.

In Blades, you go on jobs to gain cash and build up your gang, but by the end of a mission you're probably a battered, bruised mess of nerves, you've absolutely gotta take some time to relax, maybe let loose, and possibly see a back-alley doctor about those ribs. Missions are rewarding, but also demanding!

But over in Slugblaster, lots of things can give you wounds (a.k.a. Slams) - a fight with your parents, late homework, dropping your phone in the gutter, whatever. The best way to clear those? Go on a run with your crew. A few sick tricks later, and when the run is over, all those slams just evaporate. Because the way to deal with the stresses and pains of everyday life is to go and do something crazy with your friends! It's both incredibly accurate to the genre, and it feels really real!

(of course, while you're away the Trouble's probably been building up, so no doubt your parents will be pissed that you snuck out to another dimension...but wouldn't life be boring if everything was simple?)

[aaronsrpgs]

Thanks to me, you can now eat magical lollipops in Slugblaster.

[sohkrates]

SLUGBLASTER Game of the Year Edition

One of my all-time favourite TTRPGs is getting a second printing.

Slugblaster is a forged in the dark game about teens sneaking into other dimensions, doing tricks, trying to be cool, hoverboarding, and avoiding curfew. It's got all the best coming of age story features with a healthy dose of humour and technicolour science fiction.

It's one of the funniest RPGs I have ever read. The deluxe version comes with a dang pizza box GM screen, dice, and awesome stickers.

(also I wrote a bit for it and did some proofreading) but you should still get it, it's amazing.

[anonymousamethyst]

(hello lgbt community voice) Hello ttrpg community. I made a Slugblaster themed playbook for Interstitial 2e. Hope you enjoy.

[facelessoldgargoyle]

If I want my players to fall in love with an NPC I make her a tall woman. They’re so fucking predictable. They met Jessica Rabbit the Scientist today and their jaws literally dropped when I told them she was 6’2”

[rollplusbond]

Skate and Destroy!

It's time for Slugblaster: Kickflip Over a Quantum Centipede by Mikey Hamm! Join our Blasters as they do sick tricks in this multi dimensonal teenage wasteland! Check out the game here: https://slugblaster.com/ And come hang out with Jake, Devon, Jack, Zack, and Margaret until 4pm EST! https://www.twitch.tv/rollplusbond

[ladytabletop]

I am really, really proud of this meatspace zine a friend and I put together for slugblaster. It's free! You should look at my art!

Not only was it super fun to do messy, unplanned collage, but writing for Slugblaster is always a fun time. Really can't say enough about how that game took the things I like about Blades in the Dark and made them better, while cutting away the chaff and adding some cool new stuff.