#songs for the dusk

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

Trans made TTRPGs

Due to… recent events that I would rather not talk about, today's post is a highlight of different tabletop games made by trans peeps! These games are fantastic in their own right, of course, but you can also know that they were made by incredibly cool and attractive people

(Also, these are flyover descs of the game, they'll get more in-depth singular posts later, this is because I am lazy)

Perfect Draw is a phenomenal card game TTRPG that was funded in less than a day on backerkit, it's incredibly fun and has simple to learn hard to master rules for creating custom cards, go check it out!

Songs for the dusk is fucking good, pardon my language, but it's a damn good post apocalyptic game about building community in a post-capitalist-post-apocalypse-post-whatever world. do yourself a favor and if you only check out one game in this list, check this one out, its a beautiful game.

Flying Circus is set in a WW1 inspired fantasy setting full of witches, weird eldritch fish people (who are chill as hell), cults, dead nobility, and other such things. It's inspired by Porco Rosso primarily but it has other touchstones.

Wanderhome is a game about being cute little guys going on a silly adventure and growing as the seasons change, its GMless and very fun

https://weregazelle.itch.io/armour-astir Armour Astir has been featured in here before but its so damn good I had to post it twice. AA demonstrates a fundamental knowledge of the themes of mech shows in a way that very few other games show, its awesome

Kitchen Knightmares is… more of a LARP but its still really dang cool, its about being a knight serving people in a restaurant, its played using discord so its incredibly accessible

https://grimogre.itch.io/michtim Michtim is a game about being small critters protecting their forest from nasty people who wish to harm it, not via brutal violence (sadly) but via friendship and understanding (which is a good substitute to violence)

ok this technically doesn't count but I'm putting it here anyways cuz its like one of my favorite ttrpgs of all time TSL is a game about baring your heart and dueling away with people who you'll probably kiss 10 minutes later, its very very fanfic-ey and inspired by queer narratives. I put it here because its made by a team, and the expansion has a setting specifically meant to be a trans "allegory", so I'll say it counts, honestly just go check it out its good shit

https://willuhl.itch.io/mystic-lilies

Mystic Lillies is a game inspired by ZUN's Touhou Project about witches dueling powerful foes, each other, and themselves. Mystic Lillies features rapid character creation and a unique diceless form of rolling which instead uses a standard playing card deck.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/141424/nobilis-the-game-of-sovereign-powers-2002-edition I… want to do a more general overview on Jenna K as an important figure in indie RPG design, but for now just know that Nobilis is good

https://temporalhiccup.itch.io/apocalypse-keys Apocalypse Keys is a game inspired by Doom Patrol, Hellboy, X-men, and other comics about monstrousness being an allegory for disenfranchisement. Apocalypse Keys is also here because its published by Evilhat so its very cleaned up and fancy but I love how the second you check out the dev's other stuff you can tell they are a lot more experimental with their stuff, this is not a critique, it is in fact a compliment

Fellowship! I've posted about this game before, but it is again here. Fellowship has a fun concept that it uses very well mostly, its a game about defining your character's culture, and I think that's really really cool

Voidheart Symphony is a really cool game about psychic rebellion in a city that really does not like you, the more you discover for yourself the better

Panic at the Dojo is a phenomenal ttrpg based on what the Brazilian would call "Pancadaria", which basically means, fucking other's people shit up. Character Creation is incredibly open and free, meaning that many character concepts are available

Legacy 2e is a game about controlling an entire faction's choices across time, its very fun

remember to be kind to a trans person today! oh also don't even try to be transphobic in the reblogs or replies, you will be blocked so fast your head will spin

[graciedart]

all the tarot cards i drew for my friend casey's songs for the dusk game :)

[fiovske]

Tahsin and her raven, Funeral Bell 🪦🌷

[keftiu]

my last two+ years of mecha roleplaying

a little over two years ago, my friend group got together for a game of Microscope, intent on creating a setting for ourselves that could host at least one (and potentially more!) Beam Saber campaigns. seven hours later, we emerged from a feverish haze with the bones of an indulgent sci-fi mecha world perfectly tailored to our niche tastes: the Pearlescent Expanse, a former frontier province of a fallen Coalition between seven interstellar empires who now feuded over the ashes.

following that, some of us branched out into our own corners of this Expanse. i claimed Aureate, the world of golden deserts and briny seas that had once been the region's capital, now scarred by war and tyranny, and wound up running a Beam Saber campaign of my own, Gilded Sands! we told the story of a revolution being built out of criminals and the oppressed, rising up against both fascist Hellenistic technocrats and the slave-owning exiles of an avian faux-Holy Roman Empire, and had an absolute blast with it - some of my proudest GMing ever, with an incredible crew of players.

i experimented with one-shots that jumped around the timeline: a Scum & Villainy game (Gilded Sands: Cobalt Revolt) about a doomed anti-Coalition rebellion centuries before GS, and an Armour Astir: Advent game (Gilded Sands: A Sign of Zeta) set fifteen years later, as the next war for liberation left Aureate behind for her wider solar system.

eventually, i managed to get together folks for a truly brilliant 4-session run of Kingdom 2e (Gilded Sands: Broken Promise) that played out that next war from the perspective of our fragile young republic's leaders - ending on a bittersweet note, as we won freedom for all in our sun's orbit, but saw our nation dissolved in the hopes of building something less flawed in a time of peace.

getting to explore ~300 years of this planet's history has been an absolute joy, and given it a sense of depth that's made it incredibly real for us.

there's notes on my computer for what the world looks like a century later, where the weight of history and the intrusion of psychic alien energies have made Aureate into a Songs for the Dusk setting, about as far as can be from the militant grit of Beam Saber so long ago.

while i've been busy, my friends have not sat dormant: a Beam Saber campaign on the world of Garden happened largely outside our sight on another Discord server, while a friend had a really good run at Armour Astir last year on the planet Teter. several recent additions are about to try out Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands on troubled Makesh, while (with luck!) i'm playing Mothership out in the turbulent Keshi Rim very soon. Veranova is looking to host some 2400: Inner System Blues in the coming weeks. folks have spilled tons of digital ink on worldbuilding with nothing to do with actual play, creating for the sheer joy of it and for the excitement it brings everyone else on the project.

in short - we're a bunch of autistic nerds who all like mechs and love sharing things with one another, and it's led to a golden age of both collaborative creativity and getting to play obscure indie tabletop systems.

this post is a lot of rambling, but more than that, it's me shouting from the rooftops: find cool friends, make cool shit together, and play games that aren't made by giant corporations!! the Pearlescent Expanse as been an absolute gift for all of us, and we don't intend to stop any time soon - you could do the same!!

[dogstarblues]

Bingo the Bulldyke Lore:

1. Bingo is illiterate but speaks five languages

2. he's Gazed Into The Abyss and he's fine

3. when asked what he did in his free time he said "eatin and fuckin"

4. cannot sign his own name. bites his thumb and uses a bloody thumbprint instead

5. Bingo doesn't wear a shirt or bras. Tits out or Vest Only

6. "And who hasn't had their mind probed?"

7. Bingo is terrible at communicating outside of flirting, being cocky and bluffing, or telepathically communicating with teammates

8. Bingo is impulsive but decjsive

9. Bingo was a nun of an Order that worshipped a madness-inducing Powerful Spirit and considers his madness a gift

10. Bingo has a prosthetic hand. It can record his voice and also contact other people like a phone but only if he holds his hand in the shape of a phone

11. When he hits a target (he is an archer [kestrel]) he will occasionally say "Bingo ;)"

12. "Being covered in goo is a Saturday for me :)"

13. Bingo used to pray in total darkness. he's totally comfortable without light

14. Bingo used to take care of bees

15. Bingo now experiences derealization under stress in addition to his Gift of hallucinations and being hyperaware

16. [Edit] He chants prayers to his spirit of madness using throat singing

17. [second Edit] Bingo can draw with charcoal

[aitze]

Dr. Marzipan Sweetling. Don't call her that though, her name is Mars. I played her in a game of Songs for the Dusk, where she was a homebrew doctor playbook. She was from a country where everyone had food names but she took herself very seriously and was an ex-army doctor who deserted.

[ifwebefriends]

Tumblr Sings Loser, Baby

Saw this post and thought it was really cool and also wished I was a part of it so I edited it to the song, enjoy!

People in the video: @2006-stupid-thatsme @a-bisexual-panicking @animationgirl89 @bella-bo-fella @blacklred @brokenaroacecode @clarity2electricboogaloo @deeznutzdontexist @johannepetereric @outrightelm @rateater2000 @rdfhyrsc @starlightsugar @toastybagel @yellowheartz

[down-in-dixie]

Favorite Hazbin Hotel Songs 1. More Than Anything (Reprise) | 2. Whatever It Takes | 3. Loser, Baby | 4. More Than Anything | 5. Out For Love | 6. Poison | 7. Respectless | 8. You Didn't Know | 9. Hell Is Forever | 10. Hell's Greatest Dad | 11. Stayed Gone | 12. Inside of Every Demon Is A Rainbow | 13. The Show Must Go On

[mournfulroses]

Chelsea Wolfe, from "Dusk," released in September 2023

[its-to-the-death]

Villain Song Showdown Bracket G Round 1

Say My Name (Beetlejuice) - Villain: Beetlejuice

Under Our Spell (Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks) - Villains: The Dazzlings (Adagio, Aria, and Sonata)

Mod comment: Both bangers honestly

[asteroidaffection]

a moment’s silence when my baby puts her mouth on me

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

Earth was radiant Machines made work irrelevant Cities were built in a day Life was good ...well, for the wealthy, at least Then one day, something happened, what exactly? who knows, who cares. (Well, it was the climate apocalypse) Now, it's all gone, and the ruins of mankind are ripe for rebuilding it's time to take back the world, this time, try to not fuck it up.

Songs for the dusk is a FITD game about rebuilding society after major cataclysms destroyed everything, rebuild the world, one kind gesture at a time

[video-game-jams]

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - Secrets

[lamentofspring]

‘I stand there sometimes now, where the two dead trees are leaning close together / there is nothing in all the world / that means so much as that one word, 'to-gether,' and when you add 'love' to it, you have heaven’

— myrtle reed, from flower of the dusk

[keftiu]

today's session of my Songs for the Dusk campaign, Rose Dawn, had a scene where Frei (our group's Scholar) tried to connect with the ancient mech the party uncovered last mission. she asked Joyeuse to share the story of a favorite prior pilot...

...and i got to pull out the notes from my game of Artefact, a solo journaling game where you play as a magic item across its many wielders, where i embodied Joyeuse across the long centuries before Rose Dawn (and our prior campaign, Gilded Sands, where Joyeuse was introduced) with nine past wielders at the controls.

ttrpgs are SO good and you should play as many of them as you can!! it's awesome to have such radically different play experiences inform each other (this setting has taken shape through five or six previous game systems!) - and it means Joy gets to share so many more stories out of its incredible history as Rose Dawn goes on!

[shootinwebs]

( NSFW implied )

vaggie: hey, if angel and husk's loud-ass smanging is bothering you, we could always ask angel to move his room to a different hallway. (not like we could ever fix the mess you made of your ugly-ass room, so...)

alastor: honestly? it doesn't phase me all that much. as delightfully cruel as i am, it's nice to know husk is finding some respite within the miserable afterlife i've ensured for him.

vaggie: ...that actually makes you sound even worse somehow.

alastor: aw, don't make me blush!