Lmst

☀ Happy Sunday morning, #TTRPG friends! ☀

Today's #TagDay hashtags are #SelfPromoSunday to share all your promos and #GameDesignBrunch to share your #RPGDesign thoughts and dev work. Be sure to join in and help our #TTRPGCommunity connections grow!

One of my favorite things in basic Motif builds is people discovering they can wear someone down with social efforts as much as (if not even better than) coming to blows. What's one of your favorite things about your designs?

https://thoughtpunks.com/motif-approach-to-conflict/

#TTRPG #IndieDev #RPGDesign #GameDesignBrunch

🌞 Good morning all my lovely #TTRPG friends! 🌞

The hashtags of the day are #TabletopTuesday to share promos and/or celebrate the hobby and #TTRPGThoughts to share your ideas about games from play advice to #RPGDesign. Let's have some fun and mix it up today!

☀ Happy Sunday morning, #TTRPG friends! ☀

Today's #TagDay hashtags are #SelfPromoSunday to share all your promos and #GameDesignBrunch to share your #RPGDesign thoughts and dev work. Be sure to join in and help our #TTRPGCommunity connections grow!

Clues and leads are not the same thing. One answers a question. The other points you toward the next one.

Clues vs Leads breaks down how this difference keeps investigations moving and prevents stalls at the table. Clean structure. Better mysteries.
#GUMSHOE #TTRPG #RPGDesign
https://bit.ly/4aTCK1i

🌞 Good morning all my lovely #TTRPG friends! 🌞

The hashtags of the day are #TabletopTuesday to share promos and/or celebrate the hobby and #TTRPGThoughts to share your ideas about games from play advice to #RPGDesign. Let's have some fun and mix it up today!

One of my favorite things in basic Motif builds is people discovering they can wear someone down with social efforts as much as (if not even better than) coming to blows. What's one of your favorite things about your designs?

https://thoughtpunks.com/motif-approach-to-conflict/

#TTRPG #IndieDev #RPGDesign #GameDesignBrunch

If Game of Thrones ran on DramaSystem, who would owe who a favor? Who would push, concede, or burn a bridge for leverage?

See how shifting emotional stakes and character goals reshape the story at the table.
#DramaSystem #TTRPG #RPGDesign
https://bit.ly/468AaBS

Our table is open this Sunday on #Roll20.

We’re running The Last Horn, hosted by the game’s creator.

If you’ve ever wanted to see how TTVG actually plays — this is it.

#TTRPG #IndieTTRPG #Worldbuilding #GameDesign #TabletopGames #RPGDesign #CreatureDesign #PixelArt #TTVG #indiedev

Nice interview with @morrus about his experiences running EN Publishing

https://www.rpgdrop.com/reliability-over-hype-russ-morrissey-on-running-an-rpg-publishing-company/

#TTRPG #RPG #RPGdesign #RPGpublishing #ENWorld

NEW: "Why Shadowdark Matters More Than You Think"

This isn't a review of Shadowdark’s rules. It's an important discussion about what the game represents.

WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3_DYm4xi3w
READ: https://ruckerworks.com/2026/01/why-shadowdark-matters/

#rpg #dungeonmaster #ttrpg #shadowdark #rpgdesign #tabletopgaming #indierpg #dnd

Creator, a middle-aged white male, bald, with a short salt-and-pepper beard, holds up a paperback copy of Shadowdark RPG. Across the top are the words "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS" above a thin horizontal line. Occupying the right half of the image are the words "Why Shadowdark Matters".

My interest in the #mythology of #JackTheRipper began when I was an undergraduate in London in the 1990s. The student haunt of Brick Lane was popular for its legendary curry houses. A few steps away, on the corner of Fournier Street and Commercial Street, in the shadow of the strange, looming, obelisk-shaped steeple of Christ Church Spitalfields, stood the Ten Bells Public House.

https://www.strangequark.eu/rpg/inspirational-sources/

#TTRPG #RPGdesign #blog #inspiration #history #horror #psychogeography

The Tomb of the Serpent Kings: The Dungeon That Kills Your Assumptions https://onemanandhisdice.wordpress.com/2025/11/26/the-tomb-of-the-serpent-kings-the-dungeon-that-kills-your-assumptions/ #AdventureModules, #DungeonDesign, #IndieRPG, #OldSchoolEssentials, #OneManAndHisDice, #OSR, #OSROctober2025, #RPGDesign, #TombOfTheSerpentKings, #TTRPG

Tip for inexperienced #ttrpg writers: Your book is going to be used many ways—for learning the system, as a reference at the table, just as a fun read, etc. It’s best when to cater to all of those uses. #dnd #rpgdesign #rpg #ttrpgCommunity

Just posted a new article on my site that explains what Ashes of Isar feels like if you already play D&D. If you enjoy tense stealth missions, real S.O.E. history, and lightweight tactical rules, this one’s for you.

Read it here: https://ruckerworks.com/2025/11/ashes-of-isar-for-dd-players/

#TTRPG #DnD #DND5E #IndieRPG #WW2 #Espionage #SOE #RPGDesign #AshesOfIsar #TabletopRPG

The cover of Ashes of Isar: A World War II Espionage and Spycraft Role-playing Game by Steven S. Williamson. The image shows a man in a trench coat and fedora standing beside a woman in an evening gown holding a pistol, against a wartime backdrop of soldiers, aircraft, and explosions. The tone is dark and cinematic, evoking 1940s spy thriller imagery.

In my #RaidersOfArismyth game, each session is self-contained. That means, that even while all the sessions take place in a continous story and coherent world, the party disbands after the session, and reforms from a regular cast of characters at the start of the next one. Generally, the whole setup is a West Marshes Style game.

Treasure is important here, as that is also the mechanic to gain advancements for the characters. In order to reduce bookkeeping, I have so far immediately told players what their treasure will be worth when they sell it. And when a scenario says "valuable gems", I rolled a few dice and thus came up with the specific number.

Which robs all of us of the wonderful / nasty side game of judging "is this worth carrying along?" Last session, this became even more apparent: The rumours they heard before entering the place told them that a particular thing might be very valuable, but in reality, it was utterly worthless. When I tell them that as soon as they pick it up, it kinda destroys that part.

In the actual game situation, I kinda glossed over it, and it wasn't a big issue, but it bugged me immensely: How do I reduce bookkeeping while keeping the game flow interesting and fast?

Enter these little treasure envelopes: I'll pregenerate a bunch of them in different treasure groups (small fry, medium, rich, phenomenal, or something like that) and then have these individual stacks ready to hand out. On the outside, I'll then write the item name or description, and the inside tells the players what they'll get for it at the market.

There'll also be a bunch of blank ones so I can write specific values in, and maybe I'll come up with some extra notes like "as you try to sell it, the buyer alerts the town guard, as that thing was reported stolen" or something like that :D #TTRPG #rpgdesign

little paper strips cut so they can fold into small envelopes. On the outside of one is written "Sea Snake Eggs", on the inside of another is written "200gp"

Follow up, a 2nd culture.

#ttrpgdesign #rpgdesign

Kingdom of Vallen
An old riverside kingdom of humans and hellions on grassland, had its government toppled to undead hordes. When the players camp outside a city, flip a coin, on a heads undead attack.
Tethio, the livestock trading caravan and Vallen’s government, fell to hordes of undead.
Old Capital, built on an irrigated marshland, is hastily building a wall to fend off the horde.
Nirea, the upstream salt mine, was half abandoned. Those who remain are building a fort.
Foom, the hellions on the other side of the river, destroyed the bridge to cross the river.
Travel checkpoints are being used as forts to fend off undead while defences are built.
The undead are rumoured to be building a mysterious monument in the grasslands.
In the outskirts lies a massive hellion graveyard from before the hellions were cursed.
The mountainside deep iron mine and forge, was abandoned and became a vampire’s lair.
After being weakened by a plague, the hellion's Old Capital was colonized by raiders and their massive trained wolf packs. The raiders' leader was declared king, and over time their lineage built trade roads, guarded checkpoints, and an iron mine on the side of the mountain.
The mines revealed REGENERATION carved into the floor of a cave, dooming the realm. Dead peasants began being revived into slavery, enraging the common folk, and inevitably, an undead horde rose. Vampires raised among them guided the horde to Tethio, then one new enemy after another.

Pixelfed pilgrimage is a 1p1pRPG (one player, one page role-play game) designed to be played on Pixelfed. The idea was born out of frustration that not much was happening on Pixelfed and therefore find a playful way to make people engage with it and fill it with creative content. Because Pixelfed is best used on the phone, my game is more phone screen sized than one A4 page but I think it still falls into the category of one page games.
I hope you test it out and give me feedback :) enjoy!

#rpg #makesocialcosical #soloRPG #1pRPG #gamedesign #RPGdesign

System Hack: Colony Sim Cortex Tasks and Work

When you boil it all the way down, RimWorld is a game where you assign tasks to your colonists and optimize how they get performed. Every time you place down blueprints, place a zone, or add a ‘bill’ to a production structure, you’re effectively communicating a specific task. When it comes to our tabletop colony sim, these sorts of tasks are going to be a cornerstone of the gameplay loop just like how they are in RimWorld. The actual implementation, though, is going to be quite different. Structured time in RPGs is seen as something to be avoided, at least outside of combat. In most trad games, the passage of time is something either tracked closely in increments no more than a few seconds, or glossed over entirely. We have started to see games, especially games using Free League’s YZE system, paying more attention to the passage of time, while Edge’s new DPS mechanics used in Arkham Horror are assigning a mechanical bounding to the typically loose definition of a ‘scene’ by anchoring characters with a dice pool that exhausts over the span of one scene. It’s useful to consider rules like these for our game, but a Colony Sim is going to require something different. With productive tasks being primary, constant and consistent time tracking is going to be needed to fairly assess what’s going on in the colony. […]

https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2025/10/24/system-hack-colony-sim-cortex-tasks-and-work/