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The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery
@anim-ttrpgs
The official tumblr page for The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery, bringing you as much TTRPG material as you're authorized to see, including promoting the work of other creators and essays/discussion on TTRPG design. A five-person team comprised of lgbt and disabled individuals trying to make it in an industry dominated by D&D5e. Authors of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.
Welcome to tumblr page of The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery (A.N.I.M.)!
We are a small independent team of LGBT and disabled individuals who make innovative and well-polished tabletop roleplaying games that have a lot to say, best known for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.
Combined, our team has over 20 years of experience.
Continue reading for more information about us, our games, and more!
Our Games
Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy
A TTRPG for deep character roleplay, realistic combat, player deduction, and secret monster antics!
Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is a groundbreaking TTRPG that revolutionizes mystery investigation of all kinds!
Leave behind the days of "We walk into the room and roll Investigate." Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is a TTRPG all about investigation, and its purpose-driven mechanics let players take initiative, use their characters' unique strengths to find clues, and deduce conclusions themselves. We post about it in-depth a lot, so check out our blog for more info, or just read it yourself! Payment is optional!
We plan to support Eureka for many years to come through supplements and adventure modules. It comes with a short adventure module made specifically for teaching you, your players, and their characters the ropes, but you can also find the first set of higher-stakes adventures right here!
The Eye of Neptune and FORIVA: The Angel Game
Two brilliant mysteries for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy
Two adventure modules for use with Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy!
Eureka: The Fanservice Files
A comical expansion for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.
A mini-expansion originally intended to just be an April Fools thing, but then turned into a real expansion! This features several new character Traits and powers!
Eureka: The XXX-Files
Erotic Traits for you urban fantasy adventures!
Another mini-expansion, featuring several new character Traits and optional rules!
"Eureka: Cold Open"
A short story set in the world of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.
Not actually a game, rather a short-story set in the world of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.
Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG
Navigate a deadly social gauntlet in this satirical TTRPG about Drow and their underlings.
An asymmetric comedy game of drama and drow. Players either take the role of a brutal mistress whom everything she says goes, whether she understands what she’s talking about or not, and whose position of dominance is maintained by the respect of her peers, respect that hinges on how brutal and controlling she is to her subordinates; or an array of pathetic servants who are helpless without their mistress’s “leadership,” (and maybe even be more so with it).
Edge Hedge Arena
A party game where your name is tied to an edgy hedgehog OC of immense power. Fight.
This goofy omage to the Sonic the Hedgehog fanbase of the 2000s and 2010s is more of a party game than a conventional TTRPG, but that’s just means it’s fast to play and play again. The game will pair you with a real Sonic OC, so you can stat them out and battle them against others in the ultimate blood sport.
Our Mission Statements
1. To provide a source of income for those of our team who cannot support themselves by any regular means through disability.
To this end, we ask for your support as fans, if you want us to be able to continue to create more of the work you love. We put our games up in beta for feedback and extra publicity/support while we work diligently on finishing them, and as a completely independent and unsponsored studio, we are entirely dependent on word-of-mouth from fans like you to bring our projects in front of new eyes and keep us afloat through sales and patreon subscriptions.
What you can do to ensure that we can support ourselves and continue operations:
Follow us on tumblr and bluesky
Reblogging/retweeting/whatever our posts on these sites, even if you don't have many followers, makes a huge difference and is actually how we get most of our new fans and patreon subscribers.
Talk about us!
Play our games, tell your friends about them, make posts about your adventures or characters from our games, make homebrew stuff, etc. Like with the social media posts, this is the only way the word gets out about who we are and what we do! Without word-of-mouth, we're dead in the water.
Subscribe to our Patreon!
You get monthly rewards such as Eureka updates, adventure modules, short stories, previews of new games, etc. It also gets you into our patron-exclusive discord server!
Buy, or just download, our games on Itch.io
Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy
Eureka Adventure Modules Vol. 1
Edge Hedge Arena
Money helps a lot, but even just downloading them for free gives us a boost in the algorithm and gets more eyes on us!
Donate on Ko-fi
How this helps is pretty obvious.
Buy our snoop merchandise
We only get a small cut of this, but the stuff is pretty cool, and they're good conversation starters!
2. To fight back against the overwhelming hegemonic monopoly held over the TTRPG artform by Wizards of the Coast. This goes deeper than you think.
We don’t just promote our own games, we promote the games of others, and healthy play habits as well through the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club!
Check out the A.N.I.M. RPG BOOK CLUB community on Discord - hang out with 443 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
This is a welcoming and diverse space for fans of TTRPGs to discuss and play them. Plenty of different games will be running at any given time, but the main “book club” aspect of it is that people nominate RPGs they’d like to play, then the nominations are voted on regularly. Whatever wins, we all read and play. People are sorted into play groups based on schedule compatibility, so it’s very flexible.
Players are strongly encouraged to buy the RPG themselves to support the authors, but if you cannot for any reason, a PDF will always be provided for you. We have raised hundreds of dollars for indie and small press RPGs this way, and the community just keeps growing! If you’re a TTRPG designer, feel free to come in and nominate your own game!
Contact Us
Come talk to us in the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club or our patreon-exclusive discord server, or send us an email at [email protected]!
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Sorry to make this kind of post again I know it's barely the start of the month, but I've had some unexpected difficulties that ate up at my paycheck and looking at the rest of the month, I'm in the stiuation of having to choose between groceries and rent unless I can scrounge up around $300 USD to complete my rent. I'm putting all my stuff on itch.io on sale for a bit 3:
A bundle by imsobadatnicknames, $9.00 for 7 games
Don't feel obligated to help of course, I'll start looking if there's anyone I can borrow from too.
I updated this survey with a few new questions based on some of the answers we already got, if you already answered it, please take a couple more minutes to answer it again. If you haven't answered it but have seen any episodes of Muted Swallow (the Eureka "actual play"), please take a couple minutes to answer it. There's only like 4 or 5 mandatory questions.
I saw someone mention in that post you reblogged that you're not fond of PbtA. I'm genuinely curious: what don't you like about it?
The last time I made a post about why I don't like PbtA games it was cited in two callout posts, but lets see if I can beat that record with the exact same points and gripes as last time but with a bigger following.
I, personally, the one member if the A.N.I.M. team who writes these posts, hate PbtA games.
Some PbtA games I respect, because the designers understand what they’re doing and have chosen the PbtA formula to play to its specific strengths and realize their idea for a game, but I still just don't/wouldn't enjoy playing them. To non-comprehensively name a couple off the top of my head, Monsterhearts and Dungeon Bitches. And of course the original Apocalypse World.
Articulating exactly why I don’t like PbtA games is not easy though, because “PbtA” is a pretty loose framework, but for the sake of this post being not too long I'm going to assume that people reading this generally know what features and elements they usually involve.
I find that most people who like PbtA games can’t articulate it well either, at least without citing features that almost all TTRPGs have or demonstrating a misunderstanding of the design goals of non-PbtA RPGs.
Character Creation and Character Abilities
Not literally all self-described PbtA games use “playbooks,” (FIST doesn’t) but most of them do. A “playbook” serves a similar role to a character class from the challenge-based TTRPGs i tend to enjoy more, like (old school) D&D, but there’s some big differences. Playbooks from my experience tend to be much more restrictive where I want them to be permissive. Sometimes you get to swap around a few abilities, but playbooks often have personalities built into them, they often even have character arcs built into them. I don’t like this. It feels like picking a character, not picking a class for a character. I want to have full control over who my character is. For this, games like AD&D which have very limited mechanical character customization, feel less restrictive because it feels like they tell me “provide a character who fits into one of these four categories” instead of “here’s your character.”
In AD&D, your character’s personality has little direct mechanical effect (unless you count the fact that, if playing in the third-person verbiage similar to “author stance” like Eureka asks you to, and how I play every TTRPG that doesn’t bar that), characters with different personalities will probably come up with different solutions to problems, and be able to talk or not talk their way out or different interpersonal situations than other characters even with the exact same abilities. (Which is something you should probably take into consideration especially in something like AD&D which subtly encourages a lot more talking than fighting when possible even though its fighting rules have more depth, and where the game expects you yo have multiple characters which you may even be playing all at the same time.)
I have a bunch of Fighters in my own group’s on-and-off AD&D “troupe campaign” about a large band of mercenaries. Not counting some differences in skills and base stats, these guys all have basically the same abilities because they are all AD&D Fighters. But only Corvus, complaint-heavy peasant fisherman turned unwilling levy turned deserter turned reluctant highwayman turned reluctant mercenary(is there a difference?) would have thought to walk straight up to one of the slavers raiding the village the party rode out to save and say “Oi, where are we going after this?!” The slaver, thinking Corvus was with his group, told him the plan.
Sly but dignified Sir Ferdinand the Fox could’ve never passed for a lowlife slaver so readily.
Eureka does mechanicize your PC’s personally, but it’s a personality you build yourself through character creation by picking Traits and Truths.
Dice Bend Reality
Another thing I don’t like about PbtA games is that dice rolls bend reality rather than determining how well your character executes a particular action.
In the games I like, when a character is about to do something risky or difficult, you roll the dice. This combined with some aspect of their character sheet determines how well they execute this action.
PbtA games tend to give the dice a very different perview of control. They don’t necessarily determine the character’s execution of the ability, they determine the reality of the situation itself.
In AD&D or Eureka, well I’ll just show this screenshot.
In a PbtA game though, I’ll give FIST as an example (it isn't a great example but I had the rulebook on-hand.)
I don’t like this.
In the “challenge game” style TTRPGs I like, the GM says “here is a challenging environment that your character may not overcome.” My job to look at my character’s character sheet and say “my character will overcome it like this.” The game says “prove that your character is capable of overcoming the challenge that way” and i demonstrate by adding dice to character stats and showing that they are above or below a certain threshold of “character executes this action well.” And it not only has to be a well-executed action, it has to be the correct action. (This is actually super important to not just, like, the intended gameplay experience of Eureka for example, but super super important to its themes.)
I don’t like it when the rules or dice or GM of a game bend and alter the established fiction (such as making 3 more guys appear that would not have existed on different dice results) to make things go well or poorly for my character. This is a very very bad GMing practice in challenge game style TTRPGs, and it’s something that is built into PbtA. Which does NOT make it a bad practice in PbtA games, it’s something that (well-made) PbtA games do with intent and are built around doing. I just personally hate it.
People Keep Confusing Eureka for PbtA
This is the weakest point on the list. It’s just annoying. Eureka uses 2D6 with three degrees of success similar to PbtA games (though how the results are applied to the situation are very different), but it is actually an extremely “trad”* challenge game. We have to semi-frequently point this out and tell people not to try and play it with PbtA-like conventions such as dice rolls altering reality and stuff. Having to say “there’s different types of games which require different play styles or else they won’t work” to PbtA players actually brings me to my strongest point, one that isn't just personal taste.
*“Trad” as in the branch of TTRPG evolution which shares much of its DNA with games like AD&D and Call of Cthulhu, not “trad” as in Republican.
Indie D&D5e
It’s indie D&D5e. This is through no direct fault of Apocalypse World, or any other particularly well-made PbtA game. In fact most of the blame still lies on D&D5e and WotC for basing their marketing around the idea that TTRPGs rules don't matter, but the reality is that PbtA occupies the same role and causes much of the same problems - albeit at a much smaller scale - in indie and small press TTRPG spaces as D&D5e does in TTRPG spaces as a whole. That is, players and designers see it as The TTRPG Framework That Can Do Any Genre, Setting, or Concept, when in reality it has strengths and weaknesses, things it is and isn’t suited for, like any other engine. But everybody just keeps plugging every concept into it anyway with no rhyme or reason whether it works or not - and it often doesn’t - but they do it because they don’t know any better, or because they cynically know they PbtA sells the same way that D&D5e sells: PbtA players who won’t buy anything that isn’t PbtA because “I already know D&D5- I mean PbtA, why should I bother trying to learn a different game?”
imo you get the most out of engaging with media when you strike a balance between treating characters as people (reading interiority into their actions, considering the effect of various aspects of their identity, etc etc) and as vehicles for storytelling (what narrative purpose do they serve, how do their actions and personality function to convey the themes of the work, etc etc). because of course characters are literary devices but also there’s a reason we use literary devices written to embody realistic people in order to tell stories
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I’m just throwing this out here because God knows our team won’t have time any time soon to make something like this. Anyone can take this idea for a Eureka mystery module and run with it. Don’t worry if you think someone else is already doing it, two people taking this same idea are still gonna turn out with two very different modules. And, that’s two modules. Players can play both.
In this post im gonna lay out all the concepts and ideas that this hypothetical module may entail. I’m making this a regular type of post where I pitch Eureka adventure modules to the fanbase in a sorta stream-of-consciousness kinda way and offer as much scaffolding as I can in the hopes that somebody will make it, because the A.N.I.M. Team is at project capacity, but more mystery modules are always needed, and if we want to play our own game then the modules we play have to be written by somebody else anyway.
Anyone with ideas they think they can contribute on this concept, please feel free to comment and discuss them.
If any of these mystery module pitches im doing inspire you to take the concept in a very different direction than outlined, that's also okay as long as it, like, follows the setting guidelines and stuff.
SPOILER WARNING: This pitch contains minor spoilers for the Eureka adventure modules The Eye of Neptune and FORIVA: The Angel Game.
Hook
A friend of the investigators invites them on a week-long camping trip somewhere really remote, and mentions something about wanting someone to “watch out for him,” but doesn’t elaborate.
When the investigators get out there, they can’t put their finger on it, but something isn’t right.
Setting the Stage
Since this guy is the investigators’ friend, they need to know some stuff about him and have a history with him. You will need to provide a pretty detailed idea of his personality in the Setting the Stage section and some ways the investigators could’ve met him and some stuff they could’ve done with him before, as well as plenty of stuff they could know about his life.
This might not be entirely necessary, but you could also do the same for every other NPC that will be on the trip. In fact this would make for some great clues when one or more of them are not acting like themselves.
A good thing to do might be to create a 1D6 table for each NPC and roll once or even twice on it for each investigator to provide some extra facts they know about the NPC in addition to the given stuff in their Setting the Stage info.
As for the specific friend that invited them and said that cryptic shit, I can tell you that he is an engineer or has some other relatively high paying job in construction or manufacturing.
Truth
Their friend is aware that the company that he works as an engineer for is cutting some serious corners on their manufacturing, and are nowhere near government regulation standards. He has threatened to blow the whistle, and was given a cryptic warning. Now he’s afraid for his life and went out on this remote camping trip to make himself hard to find while he thinks about his options and decides if he’s really going to go through with it. He will divulge all of this to the investigators and other characters present while they are on the camping trip.
Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to him, the company has already made moves to silence him before he blows the whistle. They’ve hired a hitwoman who never fails to make her targets disappear without a trace under circumstances that don’t look too obviously like murder. No one who employs her knows how she does it, but it’s probably best not to ask too many questions that could incriminate them both.
The Assassin
When I come up with Eureka module ideas, I normally don’t like to go with monsters that have a Monster Trait in the rulebook for a number of reasons. Firstly because I like to imagine investigators, especially folkloric paranormal investigators, going up against stuff that is much more “Lovecraftian” in concept (and by that I mean things that evoke the same kind of mysterious horror/dread as original Lovecraft short stories, not specific entities from “The Cthulhu Mythos,” which was compiled and powerscaled into one big canon much later). I consider both The Eye of Neptune and FORIVA: The Angel Game to fit into this category. The paranormal threats in those modules can have their motivations discerned, their actions discovered, and their plans thwarted all through investigation, but what exactly they are and where they come from can only be speculated. And that’s scary to me.
In a lot of ways TFBs and vampires do at least partially fit that bill, but the other reason I prefer to stay away from Monster Trait monsters for mystery modules is, well, their Monster Trait is fully explained in the rulebook. While Eureka doesn’t consider reading these traits to be “cheating” or anything, it does potentially introduce some situations where the player will recognize the full extent of what the monster is long before the investigator. This probably won’t ruin the entire experience, but it’s something I’d prefer to avoid dealing with.
Anyway, it isnt a hard rule for module writers to avoid making Monster Trait monsters the villains, and here I think that this idea is too cool to pass up.
The assassin is a TFB. She can easily consume and digest her targets without leaving a trace behind, and if that alone isn’t enough to sell the disappearance, she can disguise herself as them after and carry out their life long enough to convincingly portray them randomly deciding to cut all contact with their social circles and move to another country or something.
She doesn’t strictly need a “true” appearance, but I like to think that her “default human persona” looks a lot like this early concept art for the female version of the Spy from TF2, including the sense of style.
Anyway, she has already infiltrated the group by posing as one of the other NPC friends that the whistleblower friend invited. She didn’t devour this person she is taking the place of, she studied them, disguised herself as them, and did something that would make them unable to make it to the camping trip but also unable to immediately let anyone know they can’t make it to the camping trip. It would have to be something where they wouldn’t be able to contact the friend group right away about canceling and the friend group wouldn’t think anything is wrong because the TFB assassin showed up disguised as them right on time.
After maybe about a day of seemingly regular camping, the whistleblower friend sits everyone down and tells them absolutely everything about the whistleblowing stuff. This complicates everything for the TFB assassin, because now not only does she have to eliminate the whistleblower, she has to eliminate everyone here. It’ll be a lot to stomach, but she’s up to the task.
Her goal will be to eliminate every other character there before they have a chance to leave with the knowledge they have.
Also a good clue to have would be that there’s no cellphone service wherever they’re camping, but if they get to a tall hill or something they can maybe get like 1 bar and if they try to look into the friend they the TFB assassin first disguised as, the investigators may find like a tweet or something lamenting that they had to miss the camping trip with their friends.. even though.. they’re right here..
Also because the TFB assassin didn’t devour the first friend, her disguise and knowledge of this character’s personality will not be perfect. This will provide clues if the investigators get suspicious enough to think to scrutinize this friend.
However, other characters that the TFB assassin devours she will be able to use the information she absorbs from them to do a much more realistic impersonation.
The Post-Timeline
This adventure module will need a pretty extensive post-timeline, meaning things that are going to happen at certain Ticks on the Ticking Clock barring investigator intervention.
Im thinking gameplay starts when the party gets picked up by their friend and everyone drives out in one vehicle to get to the camp site. This will allow everyone to get introduced to everyone.
They get to the campsite, and everyone can get settled in.
Through some circumstances that would be elucidated in the post-timeline, the TFB assassin does not get a chance to eliminate the whistleblower that night.
Then, the next morning, the whistleblower tells everyone the information at breakfast. The TFB assassin has to change plans fast.
The first thing she needs to do is sabotage the car. In case anything goes wrong or anyone tries to flee, that will prevent their escape or at least make it harder. However, she needs to be able to drive the car back herself, so however she’s going to sabotage it it needs to be in a way that she can easily repair. This could be removing a small but vital piece, like the spark plugs, which she could hide somewhere for when she needs to put them back in and use the car.
Maybe there’s a bit of an itinerary and everyone is scheduled to go fishing mid-morning. While everyone is at the lake or river or whatever, the TFB assassin says she forgot something and has to go back for it. This will give her an excuse to go back to the cabin alone and sabotage the car.
No other NPC will offer to go with her. If a single investigator tries to go with her, she may try to devour them if she gets a chance while their back is turned or something, and then take the spark plugs. If multiple investigators go with her, she won’t try to get them both, but will try to get a short moment alone so she can send out her ancilliary and have the ancilliary steal and hide the spark plugs. If anyone tries to start the car and fails because the spark plugs are missing, a Driving skill check could probably diagnose the problem. Full Success would do it right way, Partial Success might take a Tick. A Driving skill check on the idea of why anyone might steal the spark plugs specifically could tell them that it’s a part of the car that could be put back in easily, perhaps implying that whoever stole them intends to use the car again.
The post-timeline will consist of events like this, where the TFB assassin secretly works to cut off the group’s escape routes and then pick them off one by one.
It’ll probably be innocuous camping things for a day or so until the post-timeline puts the TFB assassin in a position to devour an NPC. Unless the investigators do literally like nothing, the post-timeline probably won’t happen exactly as written, so try to write it kinda flexibly. If she sees an opportunity to devour an isolated investigator and get away with it, she will do so.
She will disguise as multiple people back and forth to keep an illusion of normalcy for as long as possible before it becomes obvious that at least one person has vanished. Like for example, if the TFB assassin is disguised as Bob, and she devours Jill, she may then disguise as Jill. But then where is Bob? Bob must be missing. While everyone searches for Bob she might disguise as Bob again and come back acting like he just took a walk. Jill went looking for him but they must have missed each other on the trail. She’ll probably come back soon. Then “Bob” goes to bed early. The TFB assassin slips out the window, disguises as Jill, and comes back after failing to find Bob out there. She’s so relieved to hear that Bob is back safe but she won’t go wake him up. They won’t see Bob and Jill in the same place from then on for as long as the TFB assassin can juggle these identities. When it becomes too much, she may just let one of the identities fully go missing, which will make everyone on-edge and alert, but by that point she may have eaten like 3 or more people even though the other characters are only aware of 1 disappearance.
Gameplay Concepts
This will probably use a kolchakian-style map and Ticking Clock even though it isn’t really otherwise kolchakian at all.
I was first thinking they are like camping in tents as stuff, but maybe their whistleblower friend has like a really remote cabin and stuff out there. Having a place that has distinct rooms and walls instead of an open campsite would help the TFB assassin isolate people.
This module may benefit from the The Elements optional rule from Extreme Conditions, and may benefit from Rations though probably less so. What it would definitely benefit from from Extreme Conditions would be the bathroom rules because it would provide in-world reasons for characters to go off alone.
Banned Traits
Normally I don’t ban traits just because they could defeat the monster, because finding the monster and how to defeat it is supposed to be the challenge, but since this module will deal with such an extensive post-timeline with relatively little pre-post-timeline evidence in the Truth, and the monster is right next to the investigators from the very beginning, it needs the monster not to be defeated too soon in order to work at all. So im banning Vampire, Wolfman, Fairy, Witch, Gorgon, TFB, Succubus, Living Doll, Changeling, and anyone with the Teleportation Mage Power.
Players Might Play Their Own Dead Characters
This is going to be a deadly module even for a pac-manian Eureka adventure, because the monster is right there with the party the whole time. She won’t discriminate between NPC and PC, if she has an opportunity she’ll take it. However, if the TFB assassin disguises as a devoured investigator, players are going to be wise to it immediately if the GM starts controlling that character. So I think this module should come with a copy-pastable set of instructions to quietly send to any player whose PC gets eaten that explains the situation and that it is now their duty to play the TFB assassin whenever the TFB assassin disguises as their dead PC, and try to keep up the charade. This is basically a co-GM role now which is what they’d be doing anyway after the death of their PC.
Hell, if you have a player you think would be up for this, you could make the TFB assassin herself an optional pregen PC, and have a player play her from the very start. This would also be a co-GM role really, but the other players would think that that player is just another regular player bringing their own investigator to the table. Just tell GMs to keep in mind that if they aren’t completely sure a particular player will say yes to this role, then asking that player will spoil at least part of the mystery for them.
All of this would take a ton of party splitting and texting beneath the table and stuff, but it only needs to work for so long.
NPC Eureka! Points
Normally, it takes a TFB about a week to process an entire adult human body, but that won’t be near fast enough for this premise to work. The TFB Trait does however have a Eureka! Point ability that allows them to digest extremely fast. For this purpose we will allow the TFB assassin, whether PC or NPC, to have Eureka! Points for the purpose of using this ability to devour and digest victims hastily.
It isn’t normal for NPCs to have Eureka! Points, but it isn’t against the rules as long as it’s done very sparingly and with a specific intent, like this. She should have like 5 or 6 Eureka! Points, or however many it would take her to rapidly digest each of the other characters in the module. NPC Eureka! Points don’t need an explanation, they aren’t exactly a dietetic in-world thing, but maybe she got them from investigating the whistleblower friend and the friend she first disguised as.
There’s a book I’ve been struggling to read for a year and a half. Seriously, it’s been like 5 pages a week for 18 months, if that. There’s a reason I haven’t just given up on it but I won’t get into that.
There’s many reasons I’m having trouble engaging with it but there’s a subtle one I only just put my finger on. There’s nothing described that couldn’t be experienced via television. No smells, tastes or touch. Some, but not very revelatory interior thoughts/feelings of the characters. A lot of characters immediately vocalize or do some other outward expression of their thoughts and feelings.
I don’t feel like I’m reading a book. I feel like I’m reading a description of a TV show.
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I do enjoy that EUREKA: Investigative Urban Fantasy has a skill on its character sheet that's literally named ██████████, whose description basically just says "you're not allowed to know what this skill is called or what it does, but putting points in it will benefit the kind of person who would put points into a skill whose name they're not allowed to know", and it's actually telling the truth.
The change log post is a little late but the update has been out for a few days now.
changelog inside
I am very, very excited to announce that we have fully finished with Witch Trait overhaul and with it comes a ton of new features for what was previously the most static Monster Trait. I’ll summarize those here.
New Casting Implements
Two new casting implements have been added: familiars and magical hats.
Familiars are something I didn’t initially want to add but I was convinced to by that if I didn’t do it just right, somebody else might do it wrong. Familiars are just animals. They are not magically intelligent (though of course most animals are smarter than we give them credit for), and able to follow simple commands. Having them around can help with casting just like a wand, and the witch can also use Remote Viewing to see through their eyes.
Magical hats are either pointed witch hats or magician top hats, and they also provide bonuses to casting when worn. Also, they can be used for magical storage.
New Curses
Five new curses for the Witch Trait and one new curse for the Fairy Trait.
More Dangerous Curses
Curses are much more likely to backfire on witches now.
New Potions
A bunch of new potions for witches, including one that grants Eureka! Points.
New Ways to Use Potions
Potions can now be vaporized or aerosolized.
Origins
All witches had to start somewhere. When creating a witch PC, you now pick an Origin for her. Each one has upsides and downsides. The Origins are: Self-taught, Apprenticeship, Bloodline(as in, from a family of witches), and Coven-taught.
Traditions
Similar to Origins, you pick a Tradition for the witch. These represent like, the philosophy on witchcraft and focus of her study. They also have upsides and downsides. The Traditions are: Wicked Witch(closest to the original Witch Trait before Traditions were added), Good Witch, Cult of Divine Femininity, Pythoness, and Seduction Witch.
Agendas
Each Origin and Tradition comes with a set of Agendas. Agendas represent tasks that the witch has been given by her peers. For each day during an adventure the Agenda is not completed, the witch must make a Composure roll, but when an Agenda is completed, she gains 1 Eureka! Point and 1 point of Composure.
Agendas can be opted out of at the cost of some of the bonuses provided by Origins and Traditions.
Full changelog below.
CHAPTER 1
Added The Love Witch and Kathy Rain 1 & 2 to the inspirations section.
CHAPTER 6
Magical jewelry now costs 3WP for witches.
Curses slightly more likely to backfire for witches.
Potion of potency and fertility can be used as a cure to the curse of impotency.
Added witch hats and tophats as casting implements for witches.
Moved the mention of TFB-specific Grievous Wounds to the TFB Trait itself instead of being in Unkillable Monsters and Grievous Wounds.
Removed the Unkillable Monsters and Grievous Wounds section from the rulebook since everything that would have been there is either out of date completely or has been moved to the relevant Traits.
Added the ability for witches to use enchanted hats to store things. See “Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat.”
Removed the separate mostly identical listing for the Android (Metal) and Clockwork (Metal) variants of the Living Doll Trait and incorporated the only differences into being options for the default versions of those rules.
Added familiars for witches.
Temporarily cut “Why Do Monsters Care?” Heading
Moved the “Monster vs Monster” section to its own “FAQ” document to be downloaded separately.
Added Origins and Traditions for the Witch Trait. Origins are how a witch came to learn witchcraft, and Traditions represent the focus of their study as well as their outlook on the practice. When creating a character with the Witch Trait the player chooses one Origin and one Tradition for their witch. There are four Origins and five Traditions to choose from, each with their own unique mechanical benefits and drawbacks.
Added a small note in Chapter 6 directing people to look at the separate Monster vs Monster FAQ document because it might answer their questions about usual interactions between paranormal powers.
Made cursed items purchasable with WP for witches.
Made purchasing potions with WP more expensive.
Wrote a whole bunch of new stuff for the Witch Trait, finally incorporating Agendas into the Witch Trait. Agendas represent additional objectives imposed on the witch with significant rewards for completing them. Witches do not have to have Agendas, but those that do not will miss out on certain benefits of their community.
Started fixing up the Mage Trait. We are jumping from the Witch Trait to the Mage Trait because the Mage Powers interact heavily with the Fairy Trait, the Changeling Trait, and the Witch Trait which we have already edited/overhauled and so we feel to fully finish and edit these three Traits it would be best to hit all the Mage Powers now. The majority of the Mage Powers have not been touched by editing, like, at all in over two years so they really really need it.
Edited/overhauled the Glamour Mage Power. It now has a 1 Eureka! Point option to make the Base bonuses it provides into Contextual bonuses. Also made studying a person to copy them exactly be a Social Cues roll similar to how it works for the TFB Trait.
Temporarily moved the Hunting Tables to a separate document than the main rulebook. They are still part of the game; they are just in a separate document while we work out some formatting and space stuff.
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Genevya Calliera, an investigator of team artist @chaospyromancy, who also drew her here. This character appears several times throughout the rulebook art, though she has not actually been played in-game yet at the time of writing this, which means there is not a ton to say about her.
Though this is the Eureka iteration of her, she is not originally a character from Eureka, she comes from some of @chaospyromancy’s original work in which Genevya is a “witch” in an alternate reality Paris, born with magical powers far exceeding her body’s capacity to handle them. This is a condition which could lead to a slow death - or worse - unless she enters into a symbiotic relationship with a “demon” so the demon can survive siphoning off some of that excess power. Such a relationship is, of course, extremely illegal.
