escovitch bih

Check it out at afroindex.org! 💛✨

THEME: Court Intrigue

Hello friend, I’ve got a nice selection for you, with surprisingly a lot of games housed in the Forged in the Dark framework! I’d also recommend checking out the bottom of this post for other games I’ve talked about in the past!

Court of Whispers, by Alexiconman.

The Court of Whispers… the nobility here are neither great nor good. They all have dark secrets they wish to keep hidden, while hoping that their rivals are exposed and lose face in court.

Court of Whispers is a TTRPG/social deduction game for four or more players playing competitively, but requiring negotiation and brief alliances to succeed. No dice, GM or stats are used. The Court itself can be wherever you want it to be - historical, fantastical, whatever. Perhaps it's a mythological pantheon or faerie court or convocation of demon dukes?

Decide on your name and title, then invent a dark secret in three parts.Your rivals will, amongst them, know these details, but you will know parts of their secrets. Who will be the last to have their secrets revealed??

A game all about piecing together information, this will probably appeal to you if you like social deduction games. Bargain away pieces of information that you hold in order to gain crucial secrets that belong to someone else. Lie, blackmail and negotiate until you think you have someone’s complete secret, and eliminate your opponent when you announce it to the group. The game ends when only one person remains, their reputation not completely tarnished.

Rebel Crown, by Narrative Dynamics.

Rebel Crown is a tabletop roleplaying game of courtly intrigue, obsessive ambition, and perilous conflict. One player takes on the role of the Claimant, former heir to the throne who was betrayed by their family and robbed of their rightful titles. Others play their most stalwart allies: wise chancellor, devoted knight, idealistic noble, vengeful soldier, or opportunistic outlaw. Conflicting duties and ambitions will push them into points of tension, but their commitment to the Claimant’s ascent ties them together.

A GM plays the other inhabitants of the cursed and fractured Empire: nobles, commoners, outlaws, and undead wraiths. The GM presents opportunities, foreshadows consequences, and introduces adversity. They present the challenges that make the player characters’ fight for the throne uncertain and exciting. As a group, you play to find out whether the Claimant can take their throne and what sacrifices must be made along the way.

Rebel Crown has a pretty detailed gameplay loop, re-contextualizing the Downtime and Score parts of Blades into a Recon and Sortie phase, respectively. The group’s goal is laser-focused: you’re trying to put your Claimant on the throne. However, there’s different objectives that you can complete in your goal to restore their rightful title, including finding a way to gain status by building trust, weakening factions that oppose you, and either seizing or destroying holdings that are vital lands within the kingdom.

You can build your own kingdom and Claimant if you wish, but the designers have also created two campaigns with some details already decided, to help speed up your session 0, called Serpent & Oak. You can also check out a quick rules reference and the playbook handouts for free!

Courtiers, by Levi Kornelson.

In this game, players will take on the roles of (competing) courtiers, each of whom is lobbying the royal court in an attempt to promote their local agenda.  The game uses the front and back of a single sheet of paper, and requires four players, a stack of index cards, pens, and six-side dice to play.

This is a combination roleplaying-game and boardgame, relying on the randomness of the dice and the placement of index cards in a row to determine what proposals the court passes and what proposals are denied. Each player will pick up a pre-written character and flesh out their specific goals using proposals, and then take turns trying to push for their proposals to pass. The game has a very specific end point - that being that the approval pile has three proposals.

I think Courtiers is good for folks who want a single-session experience of court politics, or perhaps a way to determine how a kingdom changes before diving into what that means for their characters in a much larger setting.

Most Trusted Advisors, by the HORIZON MACHINE.

Execute your cunning plan before your liege executes you.

Hark, ye players of games! Indulge in the merry vice of dice-playing with this comic production, easy to pick up and play with but a quick skim of the rules. The digital manuscript has been crafted by our finest computer artisans to be perfect for light-hearted, madcap one-shots and short campaigns.

There is nary a heroic act to be documented within these pages. In Most Trusted Advisors, you'll one-up your friends' plans with Twists and buy their credulity with Ducats as you compete for your feudal lord's approval. Poison and murder your enemies as the loathsome Blackguard, start duels and wars as the boisterous Marshal, or pick one of four other dastardly playbooks with which to accomplish your wicked schemes. 

You can set this game in the provided setting, or create your own. The playbooks are reminiscent of Forged-in-the-Dark games, with action ratings, friends and rivals, and special abilities, but much of what you can do follows the same style of play as Belonging-Outside-Belonging games. This is through the Ducat system, which allows you to gain Ducats through certain (nefarious) actions, and spend Ducats in order get new information, present something new to the fiction, or change the story in a specific way.

If you are looking for a courtly intrigue game with the potential for high camp, this is likely the game for you.

Court of Blades, by A Couple of Drakes.

Court of Blades takes place in the vibrant, fantasy renaissance city-state of Ilrien, in a world populated by scheming nobles, court magicians, and dashing duelists.

As a noble retainer, you will engage in the polite civil warfare of the great families. You will host lavish balls, and manipulate the courts, uncover the plots of your rivals, protect the city from arcane dangers, manage your own intrigues and personal scandals, leverage your reputations, connections, and so much more.

Inspired by infamous warring families like history's Medicis and Pazzis, Shakespeare's Montagues and Capulets, or Game of Thrones' Starks and Lannisters, in Court of Blades you will take on the role of a talented retainer to a newly risen House of the Esultare in the great city of Ilrien. The Esultare, composed of the six Houses Major, are considered to be the most powerful families in the Principalities. Amongst them they have their own pecking order, and every citizen of Ilrien is aware of every house’s position within that order.

We play to find out if our noble retainers can play the Great Game and win it all, or if they'll fall prey to the machinations of their rivals or their own human failings.

In this game you’re not the most important members of a great house, but rather just beneath them. This makes you vital to their success, however, because you have the ability to walk where the noble dare not tread. If you can succeed, you may find yourselves elevated to a true place of power.

This is a great game for whispered secrets behind elaborate fans, masked balls where conversations are held throughout a dance, and eavesdropping happens behind false walls or under lush balconies. There’s also magic involved, and a hidden world that you can exploit in your desire to rise to the top. If you like dramatic storytelling and a romantic setting, this might be the game for you.

Also Check Out...

So if the sound of that leaves your mouth tasting of tar, here's what you want to do:

In the url bar, type in about:config

It'll give you a big scary warning page that you might poke holes in your browser. Good. You want to do that. Click continue.

One by one, you're going to need to put each of these into the search bar in the page, not up top:

browser.ml.enable browser.ml.chat.enabled extensions.ml.enabled browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled

Each of these are gonna have a lil toggle icon on the right hand side that looks like a funky double-ended arrow. Click that and the value next to it should change to false. It all auto saves as you go. Some of these might already be set to false by default and that's peachy.

Angie Stone

I wish I didn’t miss you- 2001

Yeah I getcha. I was once like you. Pure and naive. Great news. I AM STILL PURE AND NAIVE, GAME DEV IS FUN! But where to start?

To start, here are a couple of entry level softwares you can use! source: I just made a game called In Stars and Time and people are asking me how to start making vidy gaems. Now, without further ado:

SOFTWARES AND ENGINES FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO CODE!!!

Ren'py (and also a link to it if you click here do it): THE visual novel software. Comic artists, look no further ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It has great documentation! It has a bunch of plugins and UI stuff and assets for you to buy! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) You can also port your game to a BUNCH of consoles! ✨Cons: None really <3 Some games to look at: Doki Doki Literature Club, Bad End Theater, Butterfly Soup

Twine: Great for text-based games! GREAT FOR WRITERS WHO DONT WANNA DRAW!!!!!!!!! (but you can draw if you want) ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's versatile! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) ✨Cons: You can add pictures, but it's a pain. Some games to look at: The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo, Queers In love At The End of The World, Escape Velocity

Bitsy: Little topdown games! ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's (somewhat) intuitive! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! You can make everything in it, from text to sprites to code! Those games sure are small! ✨Cons: Those games sure are small. This is to make THE simplest game. Barely any animation for your sprites, can barely fit a line of text in there. But honestly, the restrictions are refreshing! Some games to look at: honestly I haven't played that many bitsy games because i am a fake gamer. The picture above is from Under A Star Called Sun though and that looks so pretty

RPGMaker: To make RPGs! LIKE ME!!!!! NOTE: I recommend getting the latest version if you can, but all have their pros and cons. You can get a better idea by looking at this post. ✨Pros: Literally everything you need to make an RPG. Has a tutorial inside the software itself that will teach you the basics. Pretty simple to understand, even if you have no coding experience! Also I made a post helping you out with RPGMaker right here! ✨Cons: Some stuff can be hard to figure out. Also, the latest version is expensive. Get it on sale! Some games to look at: Yume Nikki, Hylics, In Stars and Time (hehe. I made it)

engine.lol: collage worlds! it is relatively new so I don't know much about it, but it seems fascinating. picture is from Garden! NOTE: There's a bunch of smaller engines to find out there. Just yesterday I found out there's an Idle Game Maker made by the Cookie Clicker creator. Isn't life wonderful?

✨more advice under the cut. this is Long ok✨