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Tomorrow! Join us at UK Games Expo 2024! We've got games! We've got... We'll, it's just games actually, but they're some real kick-ass games!

So come see us at Stall 1-752 at the Birmingham NEC all weekend!

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What People Are Saying About PSYCHODUNGEON

"Psychodungeon does what some of the best Belonging Outside Belonging games do, which is create a setting that is a powerful mirror to our own, and then weave that setting into the very marrow of the game. The setting, its dungeons, clients, and psychoplumbers are inescapable in the best way possible because you don’t want to escape it. You want to dive in and see and feel everything that the postdungeon city of Glyndain has to offer. And then come out the other side changed by the experience." - Josh Hittie/Ostrichmonkey Games (Vibe Check and DEATHGRIND!!MEGASRUCTURE!!)

"Well-designed playbooks seamlessly fuse fantasy archetypes with honest descriptions of the stations of career." - Lyme (The Lurking Fear TTRPG)

"'A perfect medley of magic and mundanity" - ReprobateGamer

"PSYCHODUNGEON is a post-Blairite, post-Dungeon, modernist nightmare laced with hope. Imagine if the adventuring party sent to accompany you into the labyrinth spawned from your traumatic past are employed by the same company who decided to skimp on COVID protections for their care homes as it made more money than ensuring nobody living in them died, and overseen by the government department tasked with making sure nurses are as overworked/underpaid as possible. Sure, this band will try their best to help (most of the time). But also, their lives are hard as fuck. They are gonna be messy and imperfect and it is going to get weird somewhere along the line. Truthfully, I'm surprised this game didn't first appear as a strip in 2000AD." - Tanya Floaker (The Connection Machine, Solstice, Be Seeing You)

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We'll be shouting from the rooftops very soon about the details of Stamp Quest 2024, our shared UKGE initiative with Hive Mind Games and Leith Illustration, but for now please enjoy this highly dramatic Stamp Quest teaser trailer made by our very own Ryan!

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This weeks episode of This is Your Lifepath is an inter with @rascal_news own @lincodega. We talk about getting Rascal started, Lin's processes with the craft of journalism, and much more.

This was a really fun episode and if you've not checked in the show yet in this run I'd well recommend checking it out.

(I'm writing this from the past oooeeeeooooh because I'm taking a week off but still want to get the word out, that's why the links are straight to the feed rather than the episode because at the time I'm writing this it's not u yet but it'll be in your feeds I swear down)

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Hellwhalers Tabletop RPG: Hunt a monstrous leviathan in Hell's ocean

Come all ye sinners... ⚓

During a recent Twitch stream, I had the divine pleasure of flipping through Hellwhalers, a tabletop RPG designed by Moss Powers and Thomas Vorderbruggen.

You can watch my flip through here! 👇

As damned souls brought to life through evocative yet simple playbooks, players follow their captain's orders, collect souls, and repent in hopes of finding their way to heaven. Only once enough souls are fed to the Hellwhale's heart can players attempt to fell the great beast and earn their path to redemption.

What I really love...

Gambling as procedural generation: Players can bet souls on a custom-designed sic bo board, and the GM (or captain) uses that to build out how the next day's challenges will come.

Character playbooks overflowing with flavor: Building a character is quick and doesn't require rolling any stats. The inventory selection for each playbook is precise, with any item offering a wealth of opportunities for backstory.

Clever use of custom and public domain art: The book's layout captures the essence of The Divine Comedy, passing on the gloomy and forbidding tone of its inspiration.

The strong writing: Distilled vignettes, hints of lore, glimpses of setting, whispered voices, and variety haunting epilogues make this game a pleasure to read. It's easy to see how the playbooks, setting, and captain rules can work together to create a focused and thematic game.

The text provides methods for creating a one-shot, few-shot (a few sessions), or full campaign!

The game also inspired this fantastic video essay!!

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So there are three different kinds of roles in PSYCHODUNGEON. The psychoplumbers (the main cast of the game, picked from playbooks, who go into dungeons and help close them off), the Dungeon itself (who cts as the physical landscape and any monsters within) and finally the Client; the person whose troubles and traumas the dungeon has sprung from.

PSYCHODUNGEON is set in the city of Glyndain, a post-dungeon fantasy setting, a world of magic, mobile phones and high tech gizmos. In Glyndain when peoples trauma hits a breaking point their troubles manifest physically as a psychodungeon full of monstrous nightmares. While the dungeon is active the person it's came from will feel near-completely drained of energy, a general malaise and physical uneasiness. If left unattended the dungeon will eventually completely consume the mind it sprang from, leaving just a burnt out husk.

The Client is obviously a very important character but also they're not part of the main cast. In a campaign of PSYCHODUNGEON you'll meet a variety of clients, each with their own shit going on. If you were to make a comparison to procedural television they're the special guest star, the client of the week.

When you build an individual psychodungeon you decide the Dungeon's three Textures. These Textures have a set of tools for the Dungeon (aesthetics and monsters to pull from as well as desires via which they can gain tokens) but for the Client they help shade in their backstory.

(The Textures are written broadly and the table will come up with specifics while selecting them; if they select Work as a Texture it raises the questions of what this Client does for work and why it's gotten so bad.)

The Client is also the role most responsible for the pacing of the game. There are three floors to a dungeon. You can only descend when the Client has come to an understanding about whatever Texture is being churned over by a given floor.

Ultimately closing off a psychodungeon doesn't mean everything is great for the Client, that they're all better now. They're past a crisis point. Past the dangerous intensity. But all those issues that caused this dungeon to emerge still exist. Understanding them better is a good starting point. But it's a start not a destination. The psychoplumbers won't stick around to see how things turn out in the long run for a client, that's not what the job, the job is just closing off dungeons, pulling someone back from the brink and then hoping for the best.

In PSYCHODUNGEON we delve into nightmarish psychostructures, battle monsters, navigate a hostile domain, and help the mind the dungeon sprung from gain closure. We do this for a meagre paycheck. On the surface we try to get by living our lives in a busy city that wouldn’t miss you if you fell off the face of the planet.

Coming to Kickstarter this May. Please follow the pre-launch page. This is the ninth of a series of posts I’ll do all about different aspects of the game. Check the tag to see previous posts. Put in requests for what else you’re curious about the game.

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This is Your Lifepath is back for season 2! On the first episode I interview @gormengeist (GREED, Bubblegum Wizards,Nuclear Knights) and we talk about language, noir, finding the voice a project needs and more.

As well as Spotify available wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you catch every episode. This season is releasing weekly and is going to run until the end of July.

(Also fun fact; even though we made a whole book together this was the first time me and Gormengeist talked live i.e. not over email/discord)

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Swordfighter Swordfigter Fight Me a Sword

Swordfighter was I believe the sixth playbook and was kinda aiming to address areas untouched by the others.

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So I'm gonna try and do a bunch of TikToks just talking over PSYCHODUNGEON (and I'll probably cross post all of them, but also will write actual posts with words on most of the same stuff).

The first one is about the Wizard playbook which my editor has referred to as Degree Regret: The Class.

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Remember this joke?

Well, I am going to do something similar only with photography. This is a photo someone took for an Amazon review of their Clinique products.

Honestly, it is not a terrible photo. They did some staging. They have an interesting background. All of the labels are legible. It is properly exposed. This would be a perfectly acceptable product photo for an Etsy page.

I've been taking these advanced photography courses in preparation for whenever I am able to create a new studio in the house. And my teacher is a photography badass. I just watched a 6 hour class on how to recreate a professional Clinique ad. And at first glance it looks deceptively simple. It's just some skin care products being splashed with a little water.

Which is why I wanted you to see an average person for reference.

This is what Karl Taylor came up with.

And I don't think I've learned so much about photography in one tutorial before.

Product photography is just loads and loads of problem solving. You have to light the chrome caps with a gradient. Which requires giant diffusion scrims.

Those big white panels are literally only there for the two chrome caps.

You need a pure white background, but you can't let light spill all over the studio, so you put up giant black light blockers.

And you have to add another light just for the orange bottle on the right.

Oh, and if you want the bottles to glow, well, you have to hide a silver reflector behind them.

But you still want the edges of the bottles to be darker so they have some contrast. So you add some black tape to the sides.

And in order for the reflective labels to have bold black lettering, you have to reflect black cards into them.

Ack! Karl's beautiful bald head is showing up in the chrome caps! He must put on the naughty blanket.

And once you get every aspect of every bottle perfectly lit, you finally get to yeet some water at it all.

I don't love product photography because I have a weird obsession to help greedy corporations make their wares look more beautiful. I love it because it is a complicated and challenging new puzzle every time. Every product is a different shape and requires a different technique to make it look its best.

I don't know if I will be able to live up to Karl's standards.

This is about the level I was at in 2017 before I quit photography.

I have so much more knowledge in my brain now. I'm really hoping I can surpass that.

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Now at IPR: This Wretched House

You are the Tenant. Your new home is many things. Huge. Sprawling. Too much for you. A refuge. A prison.

In this solo, journalling roleplaying game of gothic horror, move into an eerie, dilapidated house that may well be the death of you. Resist the ghosts, fix the damage, shoulder the demands and burdens of the outside world, and wrestle with your own melancholy.

This Wretched House uses the Wretched & Alone system, so you'll need a six-sided die, a pack of cards, and an optional wooden block tower. This Wretched House includes instructions on how to use additional playing cards instead of the block tower.

https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/This-Wretched-House-Print-PDF.html

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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

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Have you played FIELD GUIDE TO MEMORY ?

By Jeeyon Shim and Shing Yin Khor

Field Guide to Memory is a connected path game about legacy, wonder, cryptids and the vastness of a human life, designed by Jeeyon Shim and Shing Yin Khor.

Your mentor, the beloved and illustrious cryptid researcher Dr. Elizabeth Lee, has been officially declared dead five years after she went missing in the field. You will end the game with a physical artifact you've created yourself - your journal - in collaboration with us: your own field notes and documentation of your relationship with Dr. Lee. You will continue her legacy.

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Trash Squad [Inspired by Vine and James Dean].

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Welcome to the lab, research assistant! Don't mind the blood seeping from the regulatory binders.

Our handbook, OUTLIERS, will guide you through navigating this new position. Give it a read, then pick up your new badge from the wailing void. I'm sure you'll be fine!

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Live Now: Ritual Magic for Besties

Ritual Magic for Besties is now live on Crowdfundr as part of Tabletop Non Stop.

If you're planning to back click straight through to the link where you can see a range of fun tiers including custom playlists, signed copies and more. If you're on the fence please click through to the page and read more about the game, maybe it'll swing ya.

It's a GMless tarot-based game all about relationships, understanding and personal history. The art by the amazing talented Molomoot really brings this contemporary magical world to life. I think the system of card play being guided by in-fiction questions and in turn using those answers to shade the ritual works really well.

Ritual Magic for Besties is about a group of magic users coming together to task a ritual. It's probably important to them but the scale is more slice-of-lice than cancelling-the-apocalypse. This is the magical equipment of a comiseratory night out after losing a job.

We're trying to keep our aims small for the campaign. The initial goal covers editing costs (by the great Alyssa Ridley of Biscuit Fund Games, who did such a wonderful job on Terminal) as well as a print run. There won't be any stretch goals and any overfunding will be split between me and Mol. The campaign doing well is the way we get paid.

If you check the tag Ritual Magic for Besties on my blog you can see posts I've made previewing the core mechanic, character creation and different rituals.

Also sharing or recommending the campaign is one of the most helpful things you can just fyi btw.

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LIFELINE

I release a tabletop rpg every week.

This week's is based on those survival horror games where you play as someone doing tech support for the real protagonist.

You work in a call center, taking calls from final girls and inadvertent cosmic horror protagonists, and attempt to coach these callers through their situations.

The callers instinctively trust you, but you're limited by their capabilities. You don't roll your stats. You give them advice, and they roll theirs. They also can't stray too far from the phone.

You do have a resource called Battery that you can spend to bend the odds in your favor, and every supernatural threat can be countered in some way, but your caller isn't exactly built to brawl it out with the boogeyman, so you may need to walk them through building traps, blocking doors, or simply running.

LIFELINE is inspired by games like Killer Frequency, Operator's Side, Home Safety Hotline, and also older stuff like Critical Path.