TTRPG Rat

Round One of our Green Magical Girl Showdown will begin!

Left Bracket

Powered Buttercup vs. Rue

Cure March vs. Emerald Heart

Aisha vs. Alchemical Earth

Cure Oasis vs. Cure Milky

Right Bracket

Princess Lyna vs. Green Pearl Voice

Mew Lettuce vs. Amulet Clover

Sailor Jupiter vs. Cure Felice

One of the exciting aspects of playing or running games can be how you can influence and put forth parts of the reality of the world. Being able to have a hand in the world around by making characters, landmarks, or history is a powerful and fun tool players can utilize in their sessions. These two games take that further and are collaborative GMless games where you creat whole settings.

Microscope

Build the timeline of a world, nation, or civilization. Zoom in and out of important timelines events in this GMless 0 prep game. Use this game to help establish the complicated history of a setting and let the players partake in the creation hopefully getting them more invested into the world as they had a hand in creating it.

I'm Sorry Did You Say Street Magic

" A GMless city-building story game for two to six players, that runs three or more hours. Discover and imagine a city filled with life and vivid detail, packed with a myriad of neighborhoods, landmarks, and residents. Discover their true names, and the ways that they intersect—then set events in motion that will change or alter their relationships. " From the ISDYSSM itch page.

Masks A New Generation is a a Powered By The Apocalypse system that focuses on the emotional struggles of being a young person with powers trying to make spaces for themselves in the world. The system utilizes playbooks based around comic archetypes to lay groundwork for an arc for a character to develop and go through.

Parts of the system include:

2d6 plus stat to determine level of success. Fail, success, very successful.

Conditions to track status. Each condition has a negative attached, such as Anger makes it more difficult for your character to help your teammates emotionally.

Influence, where words matter and can shift the stats of the PCs.

From the silliness of Teen Titans Go to the stoicness of Young Justice, Masks is a game that handles being teen supers very well. Were being a Robin vs being a Superboy have the same influence and ability to do well because this game doesn't focus on how easy your character can destroy a building, but rather how that effects the people around you and sometimes yourself.

Those who are good technical writers, but poor graphic designers; left to their own devices, they produce games with wonderfully inventive mechanics which often go on to become influential among other designers, but which receive little attention from the broader hobby because they're formatted like high school essays.

Those who are good graphic designers, but poor technical writers; left to their own devices, they produce games which are widely talked about because their visual presentation fires the imagination, but which are rarely – if ever – actually played because their mechanics are indecipherable.

If you ever see an indie RPG that doesn't fall into one of these two categories, one of three things is true:

a. It's the product of a team covering for each other's weaknesses;

b. Its author has engaged with the hobby's complex underground economy of commissions and favour-trading to get someone else to do all the bits they suck at (hi!); or

c. Whoever designed it just happens to be very good at absolutely everything, and is thus not a reasonable metric to measure yourself against. I'm reasonably certain such designers are grown in tubes.

[ID: a duo tone cover image showing a line of sheep running across hills in dark blue and pastel pink. the text reads: "Little Shepherd, Little Spy / a solo journaling game for 'humble shepherds' in the fairy war / + 2 player letter writing game". end ID]

​You try to keep out of the whole war business.

It’s just not really your thing. There are more important things to worry about, like Gethin, your biggest ram, getting stuck in the fence again, or Ffion rubbing against the raspberry bushes and getting her wool all sticky.

Life is pretty simple for a humble shepherd such as yourself.

You tend to your flock. You make pies and jams. You … do some reading.

Of very particular books, at very particular times.

You certainly don’t have an opinion on this whole “recently found sword of myth now in a fierce ownership debate between the mortals and the fey” thing.

And if you happen to get books delivered to you – from the rural book lending library – and then if you happen to talk to specific people – just neighbors, really – and happen to pass along certain information you gleaned from the reading of those books …

Well, what’s a little smalltown gossip?

~ * ~ * ~

Little Shepherd, Little Spy is a solo journaling game about being a spy in the fairy war. Choose which side you're on, then draw tarot cards to interpret the messages coming through the information ring. Your tarot card tells you what book to look at and what page. Then you copy down all the relevant information on that page and consult your spy codebook. ​You will need:​ 

A way to write 

A way to draw tarot 

At least four books (realistic fiction, scifi/fantasy, nonfiction, & educational)

​Little Bookshop, Little Books is a small add on giving supplementary rules on how to play the game in a bookshop or library. 

Little Mortal, Little Fey is the supplementary rules for a 2-player letter writing system, where one of you is a spy for the mortals and one a spy for the fey. You still do your solo-journaling game as normal, but it explains how letters are delivered between the two of you and when you can send and receive those letters.

*checks Itch analytics and finds a reddit post from 2 days ago*

Me, clicking the link: Wonder what this is...

Here are 5 TTRPGS I recommend checking out in the new year to bring something new to your table.

1. Heart The City Beneath:

A dungeon crawler that has your character go down into the depths of a meaty hell in search of something. A reason, a purpose, or freedom and it will not come cheap as every roll has the potential for huge consequences. Will your character reach their Zenith ability and take control of their own destiny, or will they succumb to the Heart.

2. Alien/Vaesan:

These are two separate titles that use the same system and are from the same company. One is Alien with the xenomorphs and has a wicked bad ass fear system. Vaesan is humans trying to fight fairies and keep peace through rituals and learning so they can take down the fae.

3. Thousand Year Old Vampire:

A solo ttRPG where you write through the life of a vampire through their journal and the sparse memories they have.

4. Yokai Hunters Society:

A rules light game about hunting and killing Yokai during the edo period.

5. To Change:

dimension 20: has a wlw romance plot

lou wilson: 😭💖🥳🥰💕🥺‼️💜😏🙌💞☺️

— @gorgaks