tootallfernegames
tootallfernegames
Ferne's Games
14 posts
Hi! I'm Ferne and I make games sometimes. Here's a list of the games I hope to make this year. https://linktr.ee/tootallferne
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tootallfernegames · 1 year ago
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Tomorrow!
I have two things coming out tomorrow. The first is a small dungeon adventure I wrote with Jog Brogzin, a phenomenal mapmaker, for D&D5e and Dungeon Crawl Classics. It's a highly lethal adventure for folks that like old school dungeon crawls.
I also wrote a small game called Teenikin. If you've ever read the Borrowers, it's basically that as a game! It has elements of homebuilding, twelve character classes, and a whole lot of fun.
I hope y'all like them!
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tootallfernegames · 1 year ago
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a checklist for making your first ttrpg
Things it must be:
fun
playable (barely playable counts)
Things it does NOT need to be
"good" (whatever that means)
marketable
perfect
finished
balanced
three hundred pages
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tootallfernegames · 1 year ago
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I've been working on a short game for March! It's based on the Borrowers stories, which I read as a kid. Here's a sneak peek! I should get to playtesting soon, and I just need to find some decent stock art for it.
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tootallfernegames · 2 years ago
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This ends tomorrow!
Hi folks!
It's my birthday this week, and I've decided to do a special birthday sale on my TTRPG products. For the next few days (2/5 to 2/9), if you buy one of my creations, I'll give you your choice of either of the others for free.
What is that? Well, I have two products for D&D 5e: Feywild Peregrinations, a compilation of 4 adventures, a dozen monsters, and some fun setting stuff set on a Feywild island, and the Warlock of the Dying God, a subclass for the 5e warlock based on grief counseling and death. I also have my first indie project, Cogbots, which is a two-player steampunk-style game with some print and play bits.
If any of those sound interesting to you, send me a DM and tell me you've bought one of my games! Give me an email address and which product you're interested in and I'll get it sent over to you, no questions asked.
Thanks for following me! I'm currently finishing up my first big TTRPG system, a card-based coming of age game based on emotions and ancestors, so if that sounds interesting, stay in touch!
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tootallfernegames · 2 years ago
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If you want a Feywild adventure book I wrote with my friend Doc a while ago, here's the link! I'm running a birthday sale this week where if you buy one of my products, I'll send you another for free if you send me a DM with an email address!
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tootallfernegames · 2 years ago
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Hi folks!
It's my birthday this week, and I've decided to do a special birthday sale on my TTRPG products. For the next few days (2/5 to 2/9), if you buy one of my creations, I'll give you your choice of either of the others for free.
What is that? Well, I have two products for D&D 5e: Feywild Peregrinations, a compilation of 4 adventures, a dozen monsters, and some fun setting stuff set on a Feywild island, and the Warlock of the Dying God, a subclass for the 5e warlock based on grief counseling and death. I also have my first indie project, Cogbots, which is a two-player steampunk-style game with some print and play bits.
If any of those sound interesting to you, send me a DM and tell me you've bought one of my games! Give me an email address and which product you're interested in and I'll get it sent over to you, no questions asked.
Thanks for following me! I'm currently finishing up my first big TTRPG system, a card-based coming of age game based on emotions and ancestors, so if that sounds interesting, stay in touch!
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tootallfernegames · 2 years ago
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I just checked to see that 15 of you folks have purchased my Warlock of the Dying God subclass on DMsGuild! I don't know who shared this around, but so so many thanks to all of you for your support! It's honestly mind-blowing to have so many people appreciate my work, and I'm inspired to create more for you all.
If you're interested in checking out what 15 people thought was worth some of their hard earned cash, here's the link!
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tootallfernegames · 2 years ago
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Hi! I just started branching off from DnD and have my first game out on Itch.io, with lots more to come! At the moment I'm working on a card-based TTRPG set in a spirit realm shaped like an inverted mountain, which should be coming out by this summer!
I'd like to follow more TTRPG folks here. If you like talking about games and would like me to follow you, please say hi!
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tootallfernegames · 2 years ago
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Finally finished up a campaign yesterday. The longest I've ever run, with over 25 sessions under our belts and a story from level 2 to level 7 in 5e. When I started it, I had just begun to think about designing "homebrew" for a system that wasn't DnD. Now I've made a game by myself, and I'm working on several more. It feels really good.
Anyways, the campaign was based on a story I wrote back when I did NaNoWriMo in 2019, about a mind flayer that fell in love with a gnome artificer. The mind flayer, Shaegbazur, eventually was hunted by other illithids for being deviant, and the gnome, named Cyana Sharpsbarrow, helped him find food by making a deal with the local town to get their death row prisoners in exchange for making them dissapear. I intended the story to be a morally ambiguous one, where all of the parties involved were corrupt or unethical in some way. It kinda worked?
One of the difficulties, I think, of long campaigns and drawn out stories is that it's hard for players to remember evils. Or goods, for that matter. I don't think a single player thought about the fact that they had systematically killed hundreds of people when the pair fled through a portal at the campaign finale. I think that might be an effect of the timeline (8 months of play is a long time, with lots of breaks), but I think I also struggled with making the stakes personal and high for my players. Hopefully next time I can do better.
Regardless, it's an accomplishment, and I'm proud of myself. Hopefully the next campaign I run can be more personal.
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tootallfernegames · 2 years ago
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tabletop role-playing games, as a medium i think, are predisposed to crafting reals, on top of it being largely an exercise of language.
i'm using "real" right now as a basic "something that is completely true thing." in a sense, role playing game design is reality-crafting.
this means that every mechanic and every word used in the game, down to the language, is a way of crafting a real wherein the players must accept that is real (within that space). the reality is the bounds of the fiction and also the major expressive influence into the player's minds. however in a very weird positivist way, what mechanics exist in a game reify what the game says is real, and what doesn't exist doesn't exactly mean something isn't real. so instead of a real/unreal dichotomy we have a real/real (in fiction)/implication(pseudo real)/unreal
so for example: a game might have Stats, Classes, and mechanics for making attack rolls. all of these are Real, and they inform the fiction (a high STR might mean your character is strong, being of a FIGHTER means you're good at fighting and you can pull off maneuvers, making attack rolls is you committing physical violence on another). So they're both real and real in fiction. the localized reality around player characters now exist and they interact with the game through these reals.
now these things might be non-diegetic (frex, a FIGHTER (CLASS) might not actually exist within the game setting, they're archetypical representations, which is something D&D 4e and D&D 5e do), but that doesn't matter: those things are now real due to game design. this means there ARE fighters in your game, even if there is only one kind of fighter that the PC is, there are still fighters.
going further, these Reals also imply something about the established game world. these are not yet the pseudo-reals: so for example, a game that has CAP Skills (skills that cap any other skills you might use while doing something within their field, such as Horseback Riding [a Riding Skill 3 might mean you can only add +3 to when you're doing Melee Combat despite your Melee Combat being at +7, etc.]) this presupposes then that someone who isn't good at Riding cannot be as effective with their martial skill despite having been skilled at martial skill for years.
is this realistic to real life? it doesn't matter: with that established within the game mechanics, that is now what's Real there. and in role-playing you must follow along the Reality crafted there. this has a number of pseudo-reals (implications) such as (cavalry are all good at horseriding, etc.) but the importance of pseudo-reals is that these are things the table (the player aspect) can interface with as they wish. those things which the player has no choice but to interface with are the highest of reals in a roleplaying game
your choice of language informs this even further. not just the fact that you choose to write it in english (tagalog, spanish, etc. expresses things and imposes different priorities when it comes to real) but the wording choice you choose. frex: having INTELLIGENCE as a Stat can be somewhat ableist. what does high INTELLIGENCE mean? aren't there different kinds of smarts, is knowledge the same? or is this an abstraction? but is it a meaningful abstraction or an abstraction brought about by historical momentum (it's what D&D used). why is INTELLIGENCE a meaningful abstraction but STRENGTH and CONSTITUTION are split? these are all arbitrary until it isn't, and you must establish a real to live in the imagined space (that is, the fiction). i'm not saying the 6 stat array is a bad thing mind you but i think it's useful to understand why you have it in there in the game. if it's just because it's the most well known stat array then that's fine i guess
finally, what reals you put into the game is inherently informed by your own worldview. it actually doesn't have to be (that's the point of creation) but commonly game designers simply inject their worldview into the games as real and recreate that real into their tabletop rpg (frex, misogynists who think its realistic for men to be stronger than women, capping women's STR stats etc.) so choosing what is real and what isn't is a matter of paradigm shifting and realizing that not all realities irl are the same (not to go into metaphysics and sociopolitical philosophy)
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tootallfernegames · 2 years ago
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New Episode: All the King's Goblins with Brennan Lee Mulligan
There is an ancient code, an iron-clad oath held sacred among the royal knights of the Goblin King…
“First, we Fuck Around. Then, we Find Out.”
Party of One is an Actual Play podcast focused on two-player RPGs. Every episode, host Jeff Stormer sits down one-on-one with a friend; they play a game, laugh, shed a few tears, and have a great time. Learn more on our website!
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tootallfernegames · 2 years ago
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There comes a point in every high-concept indie RPG author's career when one must ask: "Is this piece of orthodox rules tech I'm carefully avoiding really objectively bad, or is it merely present in D&D?"
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tootallfernegames · 2 years ago
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Cogbots and the Warlock of the Dying God
Hi friends! I've just published my first TTRPG products of 2024: the Warlock of the Dying God, a subclass for Dungeons and Dragons 5e based on grief and bereavement work, and Cogbots, a little two-player print and play game about gear robots climbing a clock tower! I'd love it if you checked them out!
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tootallfernegames · 2 years ago
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So one of my goals this year (not right now, since if I did it right now it would qualify as a Resolution and the idea of doing a Resolution is both abhorrent to me as a not-like-other-girls-prone-person and due to the fact that any task started in January inevitably fails in mid-February) is to sit down for 45 minutes after work every day and Write, after taking a Nap to trick my spicy brain into thinking that it's a new day. So.
Hopefully that means I'll get some more games out this year.
Anyways, I'm going to be dropping two New Releases this month, both on the 12th. First, my very last Dungeons and Dragons 5e release (most likely), which is a warlock subclass that I had the idea for (I kid you not) while sitting in the front row at my grandfather's funeral. It's called the Dying God, and I think it's one of the best ideas I've had so far.
The second is a little two-player game called Cogbots, about climbing a tower as a tiny little gear person and avoiding being squished. My partner and I have played it a couple of times, and I think it's fun.
Anyways that's all!
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