#ttrpg dev blog

[arsene-inc]

The Park Manager

The Park Manager, or PM, is the gm equivalent of this game. Fairly classic. And then I got into the layout and thought " Hey this spread is nice, I will use it for the start of the park manager section". Except it only had the top half. And I thought it was kinda empty. But I had nothing to put there. I did not want to start with the gm rules already. And I remember my little in-game introduction. And wrote, automatic, no thoughts, head full of words. This is the result. And it changed the Park Manager forever.

[revuestarlight-pbta]

The Dev of Revue Starlight PbtA Rambles For A Bit

So, Revue Starlight ReLIVE has announced end of service.

It feels weird. People have joked about the game being on life support for so long as if it'd happen any day now, to the point where it started feeling like "if Starira was going to EoS, it'd have happened already!" So, now that the announcement has come, it's kind of wrapped back around to being shocking.

I was one of the first to play it when the global servers launched back in 2019, before I even touched the Revue Starlight anime, stage plays, or other media. Though I do have my qualms with how the game was run, to put it lightly, the stories it had to tell and the characters it had to share always had a special place in my heart.

I don't doubt that Revue Starlight as a whole is going to sunset anytime soon, as we still have tons of stage plays - the heart and soul of the franchise - coming out through the foreseeable future, as well as El Dorado coming out very soon.

However, what does give me pause is thinking about the stage girls that never really got their own footing outside of the mobile game: in particular, Rinmeikan and Frontier. Some of their characters have gotten the chance to play supporting roles in the stage play and other media, but they've never been able to assemble the cast necessary to give them a major focus compared to Siegfeld, Seiran, and, of course, Seisho. With Starira sunsetting, it makes me worry that they won't have a "home" any longer, nor will it be easy for people in the future to access the stories that they do have.

...With that in mind, it gives me renewed encouragement to continue working on the Revue Starlight TTRPG. I want this to be a vehicle for anyone to create & experience new stories with all of the Stage Girls for as long as people are willing to meet at a table and roll dice.

Creating a game that sits at an intersection between two already independently niche circles of interest - Revue Starlight and indie TTRPGs - is, simply, kind of a ballsy thing to attempt and drum up support for. However, Revue Starlight is a franchise that is near and dear to my heart. I might even be able to say that it saved my life, and gave me the strength to keep on going. I want to continue sharing my love for it through a medium that, too, is precious to me.

Maybe meeting up with your friends and pulling up character sheets isn't quite the same as emerging in a theater in costume and acting before an audience. Nevertheless, it's a way that we all can play characters and step on a "stage" of our own, as Stage Girls of our own design.

So, as ever - it's on to the next stage! Maybe I should write a prewritten Rinmeikan or Frontier one-shot...?

-Yumi

[stoicheincat]

Check it out mum I'm a youtuber! Anyway I talk about the next step in Ruin Runners development. Check it out and let me know what you thinks I should focus on.

[goblincow]

Been thinking about this & putting it into practice when writing The Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pudwick for a while: thanks to the ever excellent @babblegumsam (who you are probably already following and if not now is your chance to rectify that) for the final straw that made me write this up today. I truly believe if you have any interest in TTRPGs, play, or design you'll get something out of it, it's a further 5.4 mins read from here on out.

--------------------

Play is interaction.

Reading is interaction.

Below I will argue the necessity & usefulness of thinking the relationship between reading & play in TTRPGs as (almost) the exact same thing to unlock a wide & deep potential as reader/player/designer.

--------------------

Reading & play don't have to be the same thing. But you can't play without reading (in the sense of reading representations, images, ideas, concepts, interactions, etc, not just written text), because then there could be no interaction.

Reading and play can both accurately describe a given act or process. For instance: I read a table or piece of prose in a TTRPG book.

I say this because this is an idea that people struggle with, and while I encourage debate around the concept, we first have to agree on some basic building blocks that I hope I'm able to communicate here. For instance, there exists a potential reality in which tabletop roleplaying games are called tabletop reading games and nothing else about them changes (except for the consequential ability to think of reading in ttrpgs as play, and the potential this tool unlocks), because the prerequisite role for all other roles being played in a role-playing game is that of the reader.

This is true for much more than TTRPGs, but if we simply focus on acknowledging that reading & play in ttrpgs can and often are the same thing, then we are able to make informed design choices on this basis that we otherwise lack the agency to make – and which are nonetheless choices that are being made while we miss the opportunity to observe, read & ultimately interact and/or change and/or play with them.

To not think of the relationship between reading & play in TTRPGs in this way is to limit your agency as a designer, reader, player, and ultimately to cause yourself to be unable to synthesise these roles which are deeply inter-related, perhaps more so than they are disparate.

However you define it, Good Design necessitates the application of the right tool for the job. This requires making, maintaining & improving the tools that you have access to. The reader/player relationship is not only one of these, but an integral one that precedes a great many (if not all) of the other tools that you can & do employ as designer/player/reader.

If you allow this tool to remain blunt and imprecise (and especially if you don't acknowledge that it exists and that you use it in every choice you make), what you are doing is making a choice to blunt all of your other tools, even if you aren't aware of it.

This is poor design, poor play, and poor reading,* and I believe that this is true regardless of how you define each of those terms.

*though of course we could - and I think should - argue over the semantics & limitations of my imprecise use of the word "poor" there and the further ideas it smuggles in unacknowledged, but I trust that you will be able to infer what I'm trying to communicate in my use of it and I further hope that by leaving this imprecise application of a tool here in the way that I have used it, it might serve as a good example of the consequences, limitations & potential dangers of applying tools/terms/ideas that might be best described as "too blunt for the job", which is the very thing I'm attempting to highlight & address here.

It would not seem very sensible to choose to limit yourself in this way unless it allowed you access to new tools, which is a choice that you could only make once you are familiar with the central idea I'm presenting here – in other words, if you break the rules without understanding them you are very unlikely to be taking a step forward and much more likely to just be shuffling in place or even stepping backwards.

I hope that this short interaction has unlocked or reinforced your access to a useful tool that will allow you to sharpen your understanding of the play/reading relationship in TTRPGs and in turn refine & maintain your existing tools and your ability to synthesise new ones.

I look forward to discovering with you what new agencies this allows us to unlock, and I hope you take what you have read here and play with it to design new realities that you & I have yet to imagine.

[thornebelrose]

I started writing games recently! Here's what I've learned so far!

Hi! I'm a physical game writer! In December, I started writing my first game, Along the Open Road, a Road Trip Storytelling TTRPG for 3-5 people. After I started my fishing minigame Bluesky account, I got to follow a bunch of cool indie devs, and one of them just so happened to be hosting the Road Trip Game Jam, which allowed physical entries, so I made a start on making my first game!

Since then, I've written two more games: two solo journaling RPGs involving cards and dice.

The first is called Aqueous Planet Biological Discovery, a solo journaling game about being an astronomical marine biologist discovering new species on an aqueous planet and letting an earth company know if the planet is safe to live on.

The second is called The Empire Needs Men! and it's a solo journaling RPG about playing a boy (because I refuse to call a 16-19 year old a man) who has enlisted as a soldier in World War 1. You journal about the memories you make and the people you meet, good and bad. And I wanted the story to essentially be that the bad is big and in your face and the good is subtle things people won't remember when you're dead.

When I started, I was expecting it to be kinda easy? Like, I've been running D&D games for 10+ years now, it can't be that different, right? And, boy, was I wrong.

Thing number 1 I learned: Don't underestimate the challenge that you've given yourself!

When I started writing Along the Open Road, I challenged myself to get it done in a month. I wanted to make a whole new system (which I dubbed the Open Roads system), create a whole new concept for a game, try to get better at art so I could add my own art to the game, spend ages coming up with a unique skill system-

It was a lot. I wanted to make a game that was open and rules-light, but I'd set myself so many responsibilities and it really took a toll on me with how much time I was working on the game. I would spend my entire lunch in work just working on writing the rulebook and making character sheets and making sure everything was perfect.

I didn't allow myself to take time and learn. And, sure, I love what I made, but I went far too hard on myself for a game that's completely free and was never really going to kick off with how niche of an idea it is.

That's why, with my next few niche games, I focused more on simple ideas that I cared a lot about. An adoration of Fishing Minigames is my core personality trait and so making a fishing game was a no brainer. And then making a war game with a story I'd wanted to tell for so long made sense too.

Which brings me onto - thing number two I learned: success isn't guaranteed!

The fishing minigame account has over 800 followers, which I've amassed over the course of five months. This is huge to me. I've never had that many people really care about something I've done before? And there was a part of me that thought, if I share this game to my 800 followers, they'll share it with their friends and the cycle will continue and ATOR will be a huge thing in the tabletop community!

45 downloads. The game, since almost 2 months ago, has gotten 45 downloads, with most of those coming in the first three days.

Which is a huge amount of people for a first game! I was so excited by how many people cared! And then people stopped caring and I got bummed out because the fall from a huge number of downloads to radio silence was so sudden.

I released APBD about a week ago. 28 downloads. But because the first game got 45, it hit me hard, thinking it wasn't good enough. TENM released yesterday and has half of that with 14 downloads. But this time, I didn't feel as bad. Just today, three people have contacted me to show me their journals for both games. And that's when I realised...

Thing number three I learned: It doesn't matter how many people have downloaded your game. Appreciate the people who have and the memories they're making with it.

At the end of ATOR, I wrote a thank you to a bunch of people and said to tag me on Bluesky with the memories you've made. And I heard nothing. For the past two months, nothing. And it made me wonder if any of the people who had downloaded the game had played it, without me realising that, with the way I'd laid the game out, it's 5-8 sessions, and that's not guaranteed to be weekly like I'd usually run.

I did the same for APBD and, again, nothing, other than one post on Bluesky saying they'd tried it and had fun. That one post made me smile, sure, but I still wasn't appreciating the time people were putting into the game, just the number of people who had downloaded it.

TENM had the same. I wrote a little thing at the end being like "let me know your favourite memories you've made or story moments" or something like that but it wasn't quite pandering the way I had before. I sent it to a group of friends before I published it. And then one of them went out of their way to tea stain an entire journal and, today, sent me a picture of their first entry in their journal that they had made for my game.

Not long later, I was tagged in a Bluesky post of someone who had fun playing APBD, and wanted to share their discovery.

I stopped caring about numbers then, I think. I sent a screenshot to my fiancé, showing him the one person who had shown me their journal page with their little diagram of the creature they'd found and I was saying about how excited I was that someone was sharing that enjoyment of fishing and I stopped caring about numbers.

I'd like to consider my three games so far a success. I took time making them, finished making them, and published them to the world. And people have played them and made memories.

So here's to more games to come. Here's to more passion projects. And here's to more memories to be made.

Go make a game. Even if you don't think you can, make a game. And send it to me, please. Let's make memories together.

[eclipsettrpg]

Eclipse: a DIY punk TTRPG by @yvepaints

Welcome to Eclipse’s game dev blog!

Eclipse is in extremely early phases. It is not available for purchase anywhere. This pinned post will be updated periodically with the current & next phases of development.

Current phase: rough initial design & writing

Next phase: beta testing round 1

[willows-unnamed-rpg]

Post 1) Overall idea - turn based pirate rpg/ttrpg system

TLDR: I am working on a ttrpg system as a basis for a turn based rpg that is magic, piracy, and exploration. A focus on wealth and growth plus a vast world (hopefully). I am inspired by alot of things, mainly horror and pirate media, so the intent is a more darker setting

Ok onto the post :)

I figured if I actually want to get this bloody game in production I might as well start with a long post detailing some initial thoughts with some hope of any amount of actual engagement (doubtful that is). This thing has lived in my brain for weeks now and it has officially kept me up at night now. Figured I should post something out into the world. Now I guess I should have some form of organizing

Why a turn based rpg

Honestly, it's what I love. I grew up playing RPGs and I love table top RPGs. I figured it was this or action rpg and I don't want an action rpg. Granted it might fit the genre more but also I'm the one making it the thing so I get to call the shots (until someone else hops in if I ever get someone else)

I also Game Master several table top games currently so I have an understanding of combat flow and narrative, I am just used to others adding to the story rather than it being all me (since ttrpgs are inherently collaborative works)

I have some ideas for the system, something I want to go into detail when I am less sleep deprived, but in short I want it to be classless but still guiding the player to general play styles, like mage or tank. I know pirates and magic, but the whole magical dungeon diving fits exploring ancient ruins for money (plus casting a big old fireball at a ship sounds cool as hell).

So a custom rpg system?

Yes. Like I want it to work on its own as a standalone ttrpg system. Since I should be able to make it translate well into a video game. I mean that's the hope. I won't be the first person to do this (look at all the d&d games from the 1980s on dos to BG3, it works)

The idea as said above is classless with point buying perks (kinda like fallout). Unsure if I want it to be a d20 system but I am absolutely going for high roll is better since low roll systems hurt my head (looking at 2e dnd, had to learn it for some dos d&d games and it took a bit of getting used to). But it's all subjected to change since it's literally this post and my brain

Pirates?

You bet. Look, the only good pirate games are Assassin Creed: Black Flag and Sea of Thieves and both are subjective. Of course the big problem here comes from the question of how much time do we put into ship combat to make it fluid. Especially with turn based rpg combat. And I know that will be the challenge. I will not back down from this point. I want ship combat. Even if it's just boarding other vessels. I want fireballs to light gunpowder holds and deal massive damage. I want artificers repairing the ship and manning guns. I want the player to feel at full control and be able to react while making choices that fit into the system. Without it being full on simulation.

As for the player exploration off the boat, that should be easy, like any other RPGs. Of course I have done ttrpg games not video games so I know it will be a pain nonetheless but that's learning and art.

So about that world for exploring

I want that to be it's own post once I nail down the system's mechanics but in short, kinda an Isekai (well not literally, the player isn't from another world, not yet anyway) but all the "Species" (no idea what I want to use for the word) are not native to the world, and so they have been invited over time to explore a long dead universe that they brought in their own beliefs. Does that mean human Christianity mixing with let's say elven nature faith? It's been in my mind as a neat idea but also *yikes* as well. I want to be sure that I consider everything, including cultures who were exploited during the age of sail so I don't propagate more harm. So that will require a lot of research and help from those communities. I also don't want to plop in fantasy races "just because" since they probably won't belong. We tend to see them because Western fantasy is typically "eurocentric", and this game will not be. Pirates were European sure but that ignores so many other groups (Barbary Pirate, Malagasy, South East Asian. Again I need to do more research)

I have tied in my own Mexican culture into my ttrpg games before but that's my own culture and in a small group. This is far larger and I need to give the world the respect it deserves.

What kind of art style?

I am not a very good artist so this one will be in the air until I settle, but I need to grow or get help. I would like something near realism (Honestly like how the Paradox Strategy games tend to do art, EU4 especially since it's the right period of time but again that's eurocentric so who knows)

I can't settle on a style when I haven't even made custom stat blocks for creatures or even know what creatures will be in the game yet. I will say, I love pixel art but I'm aware of exactly how much work it takes to make it wonderful. I have exactly zero skill in most art/drawing and what I do have need work, so best get to doodling to get better

The story?

On my main blog I usually write (though I am bad at posting, let's not make that a habit shall we?) but that doesn't mean I'm good at writing. Writing like drawing is an art, so I need to work on this and get help from others as it warms up. I don't want to disregard writing, it's an rpg, it lives by the narrative.

Other than exploring the world for money, I like the idea of it being focused on either one country or one city. A pirate republic. You could leave on expeditions and come back and those would be arcs. Do everything around town, hang out with companions, romance, and then to move the narrative along we build up to an expedition that changes the republic. Kinda like Dragon Age 2 and Kirkwall (not going into it here since spoilers for the game) but I really like this idea. You can see growth and change and get an impact on the narrative. Obviously this isn't anything new. But it's always a good time

My Inspirations?

That is a hell of a question. I have alot, ranging from Dark Fantasy/Gothic Horror with Ravenloft, Dragon Age, From Software's Library, Lovecraft's work (he isn't gothic horror I know, Eldritch is different but also water monsters in a ocean setting hits good) to pirate media with One Piece, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies and the actual historical pirates I know.

And Obviously with any game, Lord of the Rings and System Shock 2 despite how far apart both are and possibly irrelevant they are.

I don't have any current "required reading" minus The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings (and maybe The Dunwitch Horror?)

I guess my inspirations lead me to a darker world, which fits real pirates well

[sticktrix]

It's kinda been the only thing I've shown off recently but idc, in happy with the animations and all the movement in the combat. So here it is with all the knockback and such!

[luuma-makes-games]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D97iIRlPNocdWt15yaRfi8SNzmos-rbXaScb9clu33M/edit?usp=sharing

This is a tabletop RPG about a ragtag group of eccentric adolescents going on a chaotic cartoon adventure, wielding magic powers, beating up bad guys, and learning who they are along the way.

I'm very proud of it. Check this first draft out while it's hot! If you like it, use this link to download the PDF, then find a charity you love, and give that charity a fiver.

[amanita-the-spore-druid]

3 of the 6 core classes for my TTRPG finished in one week ^_^

[arsene-inc]

Progress on the new Meeting Point section of my game. Separated into Guests, Park Members and Outsiders. Here are your encounters!

Guests :

Urban Explorers

Animals

The Vagabond

Park Members:

Mascot

Ghosts

Memories

Animatronics

Plants

Ride Animals

Coaster Dragon

Outsiders :

Fair Beings

The Curator

Rust Witch

To help the Park Manager, each will have a description and moves but that's not all.

Some will have visions, examples to choose from.

A lot will also give ideas for what may happen when a Coaster Mage hit 0 Health confronted to these. Like I said in the book, when magic is involved, there is so much more than death as a consequence.

Find my game about magical abandoned theme parks and the Coaster Mages seeking their powers here.

[revuestarlight-pbta]

Rules Preview: Progress Clocks & Rewriting the Narrative

Hi, everyone! It's been a little while since the last Revue PbtA preview. How've you been? (Tell me in the tags of your reblog.) (This is interaction bait.)

I'm here to share a bit more rules previews - at this phase of development, I'm just rounding out the edges of the core rules, for the most part. Including...

(As usual, text not final.)

You know it from Blades in the Dark; it's beef stroganoff progress clocks!

I wasn't sure whether to include these or not as core to the system, but after brainstorming scenario writing with the existing rules skeleton in mind, I thought to myself... "you know what'd be really useful for me to have here as a GM? BitD-style progress clocks." So I added 'em! Good artists steal and all that, right?

Speaking of shamelessly stolen mechanics...

Brilliance still remains a powerful, exceptionally centralizing resource to the system, and with this new move - Rewrite the Narrative - in every Stage Girl's arsenal, it'll only become more powerful.

This mechanic was largely taken from Fabula Ultima's Fabula Points system, which is also a very important mechanical & narrative resource in the system. I had the pleasure of playing that system for a bit recently, and I was enamored with the design of it... so much so, that I thought it'd be nice to have some of it for myself. Heheh. (I hope that's okay, Ema.)

In particular, I thought it rather suits the flavor of Revue Starlight as well. The stage responds to the audience's wishes, and as players at the table, you, too, are the sole audience of your story (unless you're recording a live play podcast or something). As such, the stage responds to you, too!

Well, that's all for today. Make sure to join the Discord for more news, discussion, and details - something tells me there'll be something brewing in the coming weeks!

[loosketches]

Some concepts for a TTRPG campaign I made myself.

[thehermiticbear]

I ended up designing a TRPG in a day. Well, a prototype of one, anyway!

100* Skeletons! is a game about sending out your many skeleton minions and documenting what they do. And why they don't come back!

I will probably drop the tumbling tower in favor of just using 2 d10s until you are at or over 100 skeletons sent out. There's also a lot of little design things I want to tweak to make the page look better, but the bones (ha!) are there.

Once I tweak the things I want to and I get the cleaned up art from my lovely friend Squid, 100* Skeletons! will be available for free on my itchio.

[chariotgames]

Mystic Spire Token Prototype (Staff)

One of the three wizard tokens you control in the game. It specializes in casting spells related to movement around the play area.

Spell Book and Familiar token prototypes are coming soon!