#ttrpg classes

[bodyhorror-bimbo]

LIST OF THE FIVE PERCER’S UNIONS (yes the in universe class system is worker’s unions… the game very much has a political framework. Cause capitolism sucks)

Engineer’s Union

A cohort of steadfast trainwrights and mystwork craftsmen, none know the workings on an engine better than a seasoned Engineer. They are well trained in repairing, upgrading, and operating trains, and related tools.

Nav’s Union

You're never lost near a Nav, a loose gathering of explorers, wanderers, and storytellers of all sorts. Skilled in finding their way across the sea of rails and myst, and negotiating with all manner of folks they find.

Shotgun’s Union

“Shoot first, check bounty later” is the motto of the Shotguns, a security paramilitia of mercenaries, ex soldiers, and hitmen. If you need a train protected, a Cryptid eviscerated, or just a threat looming. Bring a girl with a gun.

Kindler’s Union

Beware the smile in the flame. Reckless headonists, the Kindlers keep the Engines hot with Sin, and force back enemies with an amount of explosives . . . that is probably not legal in any jurisdiction.

Porter’s Union

The forgotten Union though perhaps the most populous, a Porter's job ain't flashy, but it's honest work. A regimented organization assuring the safe delivery of passengers, packages, and parcels with paperwork, a smile, and sturdy arms.

[eliotbaum]

The Siphoner 🩸 A character class for The Hidden Isle. You can preorder the TTRPG here

[britneyparallax]

I loved 'Tome and Blood', the wizard/sorcerer book from this set so much.

The Player’s Option series really was the turning point for D&D. So much of 3rd Edition’s DNA is there, with increased customisation options for characters and more detailed tactical combat. But it was all optional, so it didn’t finalise the transformation.

3rd Edition finally turned D&D into a game of precise skirmish tactics, and what @thydungeongal might call a “blorbo factory.” And whether you think those are good things to be really determines whether you’ll prefer the TSR or WotC flavour (personally I prefer it when there are rules for mass combat and it is a fool’s errand to plan a character ahead of time).

And herein lies the root of many issues with 5th Edition. It didn’t really commit to either mode. Now it’s mostly a blorbo factory but without as many little bits to build with as before. The combat lacks the tactical depth of the two preceding editions, but also doesn’t really offer much on the macro scale of wargaming.

So yeah, it is my least favourite edition of the game because it refuses to pick a dang lane.

[ridaine]

Of Power and Poison

[OC]

[szkin-art]

NON-HUMAN PERSONS

Technophile / Unstable / Sisyphus / Athena

[venusmage]

Been too busy to run our D&D game lately but still thinking about it..

[anim-ttrpgs]

Why You Should Try Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy Part 8: Fun and Easy Character Creation

This is part 8 of a multi-part series of posts about the awesome features of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, in no particular order.

Find the earlier parts here:

Part 1 Link: We Worked Hard on It!

Part 2 Link: It's Easy to Learn!

Part 3 Link: It's Easy to GM!

Part 4 Link: It's Easy to GM and Supports Narrative and Roleplay!

Part 5 Link: It Revolutionizes Investigation and Mystery Solving in TTRPGs

Part 6 Link: PCs are Not Just Mystery Solving Automatons

Part 7 Link: Excellent Time-Keeping Mechanics Keep the Pressure On

I talked about Skills in previous parts, and here we will go more in-depth into them, as well as other awesome things that make up a Eureka character.

Skills

As mentioned before, Eureka characters have an all-purpose array of 21 Skills meant to cover just about anything they’re likely to encounter while trying to solve a mystery, with a rating that tells you how good or bad they are at each of these skills. You don’t roll for skill points, nor do you get a set amount of them to distribute. The only rules are that each skill must be set to a rating between -3 and +3, and at the end, they all have to add up to a net 0. This means that for every +3(making them an expert at that skill), they have to have a -3 somewhere else, or three -1s, etc. This can make character creation a little bit like a puzzle, where you slowly uncover just who your PC is as you move their skills around to add up to 0, while still giving you complete control over their strengths and weaknesses.

There are also additional “Write-In” skills, which are more specialized. You can also write in your own skills as Write-In skills if none of the official ones suit your PC. Any Write-In skill has to be set to +1 or higher, and counts for the total.

Traits

In addition to skills, Eureka characters are made up of Traits. These are literally personality traits that have a mechanical effect on that PC’s gameplay, further supporting roleplay. Each PC has 3 Traits by default, but additional Traits, up to 6 total, can be added at the cost of extending how many Investigation Points it costs them to get a Eureka! Point.

Traits can radically change how the PC plays, and of course help define their personality by encouraging and discouraging certain behaviors through bonuses and penalties. Many Traits also provide additional ways of spending Eureka! Points.

Here’s a few examples and a link to a big masterpost of Traits, though at the time of writing this there’s even more Traits than the masterpost shows. You’ll have to download the Eureka rulebook to see them all. (It's linked at the top of this post.)

Truth

A PC’s “Truth” is another mechanic that really fleshes them out in gameplay. It is one of more extra little elements of their personality. It could be a motto they live by, their short temper, their overly trusting nature, etc. The only rule is that it has to be something that would be likely to spur them to action or get them into trouble. Once per Scene, when they say or do something that is in line with their Truth, they gain a +1 bonus to their next 5 skill checks. This keeps your characters acting in-character, and rewards it.

Inventory and Wealth

You might have noticed that "Wealth" is a skill. In short, this skill is rolled when PCs buy something, or when they need to know something about high-society. (It can also be reversed when they need to know things about lower class environments.)

Another thing that Wealth governs is the PC’s inventory items.

Inventory items are determined on a per-scenario basis by rolling for how many Wealth Points can be spent on items before the scenario starts. You’ll get your investigator a house (or equivalent), a vehicle, and whatever else they can afford. Having the right item for the job can save lives, but powerful weapons, fast cars, comfortable homes, etc. can get expensive quick. Just like in real life, rich people generally have an easier time of things, but some of the best moments in our own campaigns have come from PCs struggling with money.

(You also fill out the PC’s Tiers of Fear in character creation but I already talked about that in Part 6.)

[tomicscomics]

12/13/2024

"Oh! My CHARACTER has ALSO taken a vow of poverty."

The saints' RPG adventure continues every Monday and Friday through December!

JOKE-OGRAPHY: 1. Continuing from the last few cartoons, an angel is running a fantasy RPG for some saints in heaven, namely Sts. Thomas Aquinas, Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, and Nicholas of Myra. If you haven't seen the previous parts yet, I assume you are lost. Not physically, but spiritually. 2. As the angel begins the story, he narrates a tavern. In the fantasy RPG community, it's considered cliche to have the story start in a tavern, since everyone seems to do it. Maybe it's because it's a natural gathering place rife with gossip and occasional violence. Hey, if it works, it works! 3. The angel asks the players to introduce their characters by name, race (as in human, elf, dwarf, etc.), class (as in knight, thief, wizard, etc.), and reason for adventuring (as in something like "I need treasure to buy a dog" or "I want to fight a dragon"). This is a simple way to begin visualizing each character before the action starts. 4. When the angel invites the players to introduce themselves, St. Francis of Assisi goes first, introducing his real-life self, rather than his in-game character as the angel intended. By "class," Francis assumes the angel means economic class, but he is incorrect, for as I have formerwhence stated, the angel is asking them to introduce their CHARACTERS. Hence, the angel says, "Not YOU, Francis. Your CHARACTER." For, verilywise, the angel is asking them to introduce their CHARACTERS. For this reason the angel says, "Not YOU, Francis. Your CHARACTER."

[anonbeadraws]

the calendar is coming along!! 💚 Also help me decide on a title!!

[vivtanner]

The Hidden Isle 🏝️ - Stickersheet for your campaign notes

[theresattrpgforthat]

Do you have recommendations for working class sci fi/space opera games?

I've been enjoying reading through Traveller and Orbital Blues and reading books like The Expanse about just regular people making ends meet IN SPAAAACE. So I'm curious if you know of any other games matching that regular people doing regular things but also exciting things threaten the status quo.

THEME: Working Class Sci-Fi

Hello, I hope you find something in here that suits your fancy!

Comet Express, by Dice Doctor Games.

Inter-galactic delivery is perilous

Dangerous people need dangerous goods transported to dangerous places.

This is where Comet Express gets in. The safety of our delivery crew is secondary to the successful delivery of your precious cargo.

Why would anyone in their sane mind do this job? Three reasons. One Money. Two Thrill. And Three, who said you were sane?

Comet Express is all about just trying to get your job done and go home - alive. You're all part of a trading company that values its cargo over its crew, with a successful job being determined with the condition your cargo is in by the end of the job.

What's interesting to me is that I don't see anything on the page that says that you can fail. Your roll determines whether or not you avoid risk; but from what I can see, you can do well, do poorly, or somewhere in between. It's typically assumed that at least some of your cargo makes it to your final destination.

What's also interesting is that your character dying is no excuse to get the job done. Character creation is meant to be quick and simple, so if you die, just roll a few d6 and you'll have a new grunt to move the payload.

I think that perhaps the biggest weakness of Comet Express is the lack of roll-tables for the GM. There's a few in this brochure-sized game, but most of the outcomes are rather vague, and still require a lot of improv. If you're a GM that likes to come up with everything on your own, this won't be an issue, but a new GM might struggle.

Pressure: Industrial Science Fiction, by Osprey Publishing.

A science fiction roleplaying game of bringing law and order to the dark and dangerous corners of the universe.

Pressure: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying is a rules-light, story-focused game of facing the darkness at the heart of humanity’s fragile and claustrophobic existence – both on Earth and among the stars. An entirely standalone title, Pressure also develops and expands upon the mechanics and setting introduced in the Those Dark Places roleplaying game.

As highly skilled agents of Special Operations Squads, players are tasked with cleaning up after the Corporations – investigating links to organized crime, neutralizing rogue weapons research, negotiating with rebel leaders on orbital stations, and hunting down whatever that black-budget excavation team ‘awoke’ out in the Procyon Sector…

The universe is a dangerous and hostile place; the Hypercities and the Deep Black alike hide powerful foes. But you have the tools, the training, and the resources to face these dangers… you hope.

Pressure has a unique game system, although pieces of it sound familiar. There's Attributes and Skills that will add modifiers to your basic dice roll, as well as a stress mechanic called Pressure, which you will have to test yourself against every time your character suffers something shocking or disturbing. Already this sounds like a much better mechanic to me than a sanity or madness degeneration!

Thematically, this definitely looks like very hard sci-fi, with trained military operatives in space being the core focus. This is a space-horror game, although what kind of horror that is feels like it's up to whatever the table is interested in.

If you want to read a full review of the game, check out what Lowell Francis has to say about it on his blog, Age of Ravens.

Transit: The Spaceship RPG, by Fiddleback Productions.

TRANSIT takes place beyond our home planet, allowing you to traverse the unlimited depths of space and explore worlds outside our own galaxy.

Your role as an Artificial Intelligence is to inhabit an interplanetary vessel, manage your resources, and direct your crew. You’ll deploy your ship’s officers into the field, hunt down criminals, engage in interstellar combat, and deliver supplies and colonists to remote settlements.

You must rely on your resources to complete missions by acting through your ship, tech, and crew. Three different AI types – Combat, Command, and Support – lend themselves to varied and interesting game play, but it’s when an AI is paired with a ship that the real diversity in character creation comes to the fore.

TRANSIT is more than just an intergalactic skirmish game. When your interests and those of your crew are aligned, things can go very well, but when you and your crew come into conflict, they turn from asset to liability. They’ll think you’re insane, but you’re just trying to survive and complete your mission. How did it come to this? What will you do next?

While skimming the reviews for this game, I came across a big fountain of praise for TRANSIT's index. I love a good index, and am often saddened when a game has a poorly organized index, or doesn't have one at all. A book that you can reference well is infinitely easier to use.

On top of this, TRANSIT feels like a really unique combination, as it's both a skirmish game and Powered by the Apocalypse. Those are two things I don't normally think would be put together! It's also got a really unique perspective, since you are playing ships, rather than the people inside them. Is your AI going to be human-like, or something completely different? Find out in TRANSIT.

Voidhunters, by Fox Tale Games.

It has been forty years since the end of the last Great War, in which the Espiri Empire consolidated victory against Salvatori forces. The war was hard-won – planets were bombarded, resources were leashed to build grand war engines and vast voidborn battleships, and though the embers are slowly burning out, the winds of rebellion are relentless in stirring dissent.

But the war is of no concern of you and your crew. You are voidhunters, freelancers tasked by government and private clients to search for treasure in the depths of space. It’s dangerous work, but it pays the bills, and it’s always interesting.

From empty war hulks drifting powerless through space, to locked-down laboratories hiding unfinished weapons, tech and viruses, to the ruins of the Asar, the ancient space-faring civilization that came before your own, every episode of Voidhunters can take you and yours somewhere new.

Voidhunters feels a little closer to science fantasy, because it describes itself as a soft sci-fi setting, with magic and mechs. It's inspired by media such as Cowboy Bebop, Rogue One, and Firefly, where danger is supposed to be constantly present, while opportunities to be a hero are still around the corner.

The game uses d20 dice pools, and characters are a collection of Abilities, Skills and Talents. Ability scores determine your target number to roll under. Attributes & Skills give you dice. Talents are special things your character (and only your character) can do.

An interesting extra detail in Voidhunters is that matching your target number is even better than rolling under; it reduces the number of threats the GM can roll at you, and allows you to set yourself up for a better chance for the next time you roll as well. Otherwise, the GM will be able to collect threat dice to make things harder to do, or even more dangerous if they feel like it.

If you want a bit of action movie pulp in your space drink, maybe consider Voidhunters.

Free Spacer, by Christoph Sapinsky.

Free Spacer is a contemporary science fiction tabletop roleplaying game. It leverages the newest space sciences, takes into account biotechnology, and brings the internet to the rim of the quadrant.

As a Free Spacer, you’re a crew member on a small starship, an outsider, and a contractor. You’ll explore new worlds, investigate dangers, negotiate contracts, operate your starship, and do science!

As the Game Master, you have a wealth of tools at your disposal to build whole worlds and manage the machinations of sector factions in the ongoing Cold War. You’ll be able to easily run conflicts, spaceflight, fabrication projects, and other challenges, while quickly generating new locations and characters.

Play to find out how the crew gets the job done, the choice they make, the rules they break, and the length will go for their Patrons.

The author of Free Spacer says his principal purpose of the game was to make it feel like science fiction, and everything I'm seeing from it looks like hard sci-fi. The setting is a deeply imperfect future; no faster-than-light communication, a sector-wide cold war, and the need to negotiate contracts for every job.

The game uses 2 different kinds of dice: d10's and d6's. d10's contribute to your chances of success, while d6's contribute to your chances of failure. All of the rolls are player-facing, with the GM contributing threats and complications, which definitely feels a little reminiscent of Star Wars FFG, down to the non-binary dice results. You can succeed, you can miss, but you can also have a little bit of both worlds, which I think has the potential for nuanced storytelling.

Space Ambulance, by Bully Pulpit Games.

Space is a huge inconvenience. It’s big, it’s dangerous, and it is between you and anywhere interesting.

Once upon a time it was so outrageously hazardous that people traveling through it were killed now and then just for being there. Of course today spaceships are safe and sensible and no one dies in old-fashioned ways like “hull depressurization” or “reactor explosion”. Today spaceships are smart - smarter than you and me - and they are carefully built with safety in mind. You are far, far more likely to be killed by falling out of bed than you are by a spaceship failure.

And yet.

Sapient beings are amazingly fragile and incompetent. We touch things we are told not to touch. We eat too much, or too little. We make poor choices about who to make friends with. We fall out of bed. Sometimes, through no fault of our friendly and safe spaceships, we get in trouble in space.

When this happens, every second counts. You need to call an ambulance - a space ambulance.

Space Ambulance is a game about the dedicated professionals of the space ambulance services. You will explore the lives and loves of the crews, both on the job and off, as they perform dramatic (and not so dramatic) rescues, fill out paperwork, and await their next thrilling (or not so thrilling) call.

Space Ambulance advertises itself as focused on the drama between the characters, so I'm guessing it might be something like Grey's Anatomy - in space! Bully Pulpit Games in general intrigues me with a lot of the concepts they put forward, so I think that whatever you pick up from them, you're in for a solidly good time.

Xenopolitan, by Willy Elektrix.

Xenopolitan is an RPG about everyday life in an alien metropolis. Live the life of an extraterrestrial person with real world problems. Play as a human or extraterrestrial entrepreneur, student, artist, social worker, politician, reporter, criminal, detective, or anything else, and experience life in this galactic future-scape.

Setting: The year is 2099. Ingress is a city with 90 million people from thousands of different species and planets. It flies in the skies above Earth and is a hub for extraterrestrials conducting business with various Earthling corporations and governments. Players are denizens of this sprawling, cosmopolitan city, and their backgrounds and goals can be as diverse as the city’s population.

Xenopolitan really does feel like an alien slice-of-life rpg. The entire book is dotted with in-world excerpts, like newspaper obituaries, reviews of various artists, and even dating profiles for NPCs!

The game uses Fudge Dice, also known as Fate Dice, if I'm not mistaken. It also uses a d10 as a Luck die, which doesn't really contribute to success or failure, but ether adds a benefit or a complication. The things you'll be rolling for appear to be rather mundane things, like figuring out how to break up with your girlfriend, or trying to pass your driver's test.

At it's core, Xenopolitan is about making it in a big, big city. Each character will have personal weaknesses and drawbacks that they'll have to work to accommodate or overcome, such as a criminal record, a responsibility to take care of someone else, an undocumented immigration status, etc. If you want to mix the speculative, goofy elements of sci-fi with the mundane, everyday struggles of modern life, you might like Xenopolitan.

Additional Cool Things...

Last Fleet, by Black Armada Games.

Arkyvr, a toolkit for Mothership that has players cast as a documentary crew.

Holdfast Station, by Lampblack and Brimstone.

Space And Stars Rec Post

Space Adventures Rec Post

Space Westerns Rec Post

Space Fantasy Rec Post

If you like what I do, you can always leave a token of appreciation at my Ko-Fi!

[sicc-nasti]

Please feel free to dm me here! Would love to take on a slew of these! ^_^ And feel free to ask questions! Paypal only, prices are USD <:3 I will draw just about anything - feel free to inquire! TF2 ocs, Fursonas, Cyberpunk ocs, TTRPG ocs, anything's on my list to try :> ! Last two characters pictured belong to duskgryphon and ottosbigtop

[swtechspecs]

Core Galaxy Systems Dynamic-Class Light Freighter

Source: Starships of the Galaxy, Saga Edition (Wizards of the Coast, 2007)

[worldsbeyondpod]

The moment you’ve been waiting for has arrived! It’s our pleasure to announce that the Witch Class is now available to playtest, free for patrons. With spell tokens, covens, and curses, explore a variety of flavorful new mechanics at your table.

In the next few months we'll be putting together a questionnaire for anyone who's interested in giving us feedback, so keep your eyes open for that. We can't wait to hear your thoughts!

Check out the new class, and much more, at patreon.com/worldsbeyondnumber

Extra special thanks go out to our incredible collaborators on this project:

Design: Mazey Veselak, Brandes Stoddard Additional Design & Editing: Brennan Lee Mulligan, Hannah Rose, Erika Ishii Playtester in Chief: Erika Ishii

Layout: Ruby Lavin

Illustrators: Corey Brickley, Tucker Donovan, Lorena Lammer, Taylor Moore

[krembruleed]

little meanie back by popular demand???

part 1

(she does mellow with time, i promise)

[gudgurkan]

Dark Cleric

This is the final cute fantasy character sticker! (For now) Procreate time-lapse: