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All posts for the month June, 2024
[7:34 PM]HOO (Biological Male):
Hi, there. I am Michael from Paradox Games, and I’m a hex-and-counter gamer who made my first RPG, Radical High, which is a passion project since I love the 1980s. There are six modules (so far) to the Radical High franchise, and I’m not done because I forget which module was the one for tonight’s discussion. (Can you answer that, Dan?) (edited)
[7:34 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
(Radical High Fon Phreaker’s Recipe Book)
[7:36 PM]HOO (Biological Male):
Okay. Fon Phreaker’s Recipe Book. This is the fifth module in the series, and each module expands on and explores different facets of the real 1980s. This module is for those who are tech-minded, and characters can delve into the technology that enables them to discover party lines and/or subvert the phone company to make free calls.
[7:37 PM]HOO (Biological Male):
in the 1980s, all calls that were not local calls were toll calls, and fon phreakers were an underground subculture that found ways to get around paying for calls. This module explores this subculture. (Done)
[7:38 PM]Pris Mascotti: I am Nathan Reese Maher, I’ve been designing tabletop roleplaying games for well over 10 years now. I cut my teeth on AD&D back in the early 90s and became obsesed with TTRPGs since. Today I bring the “AgeUp Core Rules” which is a generic system aimed at providing aging milestones for games such as being able to play as kids, teenagers, adults, aged adults or even elders, while keeping rules streamlined so that storytellers can focus more on the story and less time on statistic generation. You can play in any era, fantasy to modern times, with unlimited levels that doesn’t slow down gameplay. The rules are seperate in an approximate 250 page book, and along with it are campaign settings of equal size. The one I’m bringing to the table is “Lights Out – The Roleplaying Game” which was produced back in June of 2017. I like to describe it as a post-parent apocalypse where the kids of superpowers and monsters come out at night. It’s based off the children’s chapter series that I wrote “Lights Out” which focuses on what happened to the parents, the relationships the kids create in a parentless world, as well as surviving in a world filled with monsters, faeries, ghosts and many other things that go bump in the night.
[7:39 PM]Pris Mascotti: Cool! I’m Nathan Maher, I’ve been writing since forever, and have been designing materials since 2nd edition AD&D. I’m originally from Iowa but I now live in Washington state. My first successful tabletop roleplaying game was “Spooks! Welcome to the Great Beyond” nearly 10 years ago, and that’s what brings us to “AgeUp Core Rules” and its following campaign settings such as “Spectres!”. The concept of “AgeUp” is from the storytelling perspective of taking a character from the young age of 6 (or any starting age) and receiving benefits each time the character reaches an age milestone. There is child, teenager, adult, aged adult, and elder in these cases. Instead of starting at level 1, the rules are designed so that most characters (as children) start at level 7 but could be considered higher or lower based upon how much they’ve experienced throughout their life so far. Thus, if people want to play an elder grandma the grandma does have their AgeUp abilities but may have been a shutin so they don’t have many levels. There is no level cap, and XP is gained based on the number of hours you play 1 level per 4 hours, rather than on specific events such as combat. It’s a 2d6 system, that also makes use of a single deck of playing cards which are used to track wounds and allow one to boost their rolls for better outcomes. The rules themselves are intended for games played in fantasy settings to modern times, including equipment lists that range from the 1900s to the 2020s. Additionally, these rules are being placed beneath the ORC license for people to use in their own games whether it is personal or commercial. (done)
[1:04 PM]Cezar Capacle | (he/him): My name is Cezar Capacle, I’m a Brazilian tabletop game designer, currently living in Madeira Island. I’ve been making games full time for the past three years, and have released more than 30 games since. My latest release is Wraithound, a ghost-hunting game that uses cards and dice and takes you to investigate supernatural activities in eerie manors (done)
[12:24 PM]Kieron: I’m Kieron Gillen – I’m a recovering game critic and (primarily comic) writer. In a previous life, I wrote about videogames – I worked at PC Gamer for 5 years, then co-founded the PC Games blog Rock paper Shotgun. Overlapping and after that, I’ve had a career in comics – both my own stuff and a whole bunch of stuff for other people (mainly marvel).
[12:25 PM]Kieron: My Marvel work basically includes all the characters you’ll have heard of and quite a few you probably haven’t – books included the recent Immortalk X-men, Journey into Mystery, Thor, Iron Man, Darth Vader, Star Wars, Doctor Aphra, Young Avengers, Eternals and more.
[12:27 PM]Kieron: My own stuff is mainly at Image comics, where I’ve done books like The Wicked + the Divine, DIE, Phonogram, Three, Ludocrats.
[12:27 PM]Kieron: https://imagecomics.com/creators/kieron-gillenImage ComicsKieron GillenKieron Gillen first came to attention as a comic creator with his 2006’s Phonogram, with Jamie McKelvie. Jamie and he formed into a gestalt monster that rampaged against the next fifteen years of comics, culminating with critical and smash hit The Wicked + the Divine. When not with Jamie, he has…
[12:27 PM]Kieron: My books elsewhere are things like Once & Future and Uber.
[12:29 PM]Kieron: Relevantly, back in 2018 I started a comic called DIE with Stephanie Hans, which is basically a big comic about my relationship with RPGs and what RPGs can do. It ran for 20 issues until I reached its conclusion. Stuff about it on its site…
[12:29 PM]Kieron: https://diecomic.com/editthissite
[12:29 PM]Kieron: Here’s some covers
[12:31 PM]Kieron: Alongside that, I wrote an RPG which basically allowed you to do your own version of the basic scenario of the comic – a group of realworld flawed people get sucked into a fantasy world where they’re confronted with versions of their hopes and fears – basically their inner life externalised.
[12:31 PM]Kieron: It went through a bunch of Beta, and eventually Rowan Rook & Decard helped me edit it to a reasonable shape, and we ran a kickstarter. Which went well!
[12:31 PM]Kieron: It’s for sale here now…
[12:31 PM]Kieron: https://rowanrookanddecard.com/product/die-the-roleplaying-game/Rowan, Rook and DecardDIE: The Roleplaying Game – Rowan, Rook and DecardDIE RPG is a roleplaying game based on the comic of the same name by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans. Buy the PDF and book here directly from the publisher
[12:32 PM]Kieron: And we’ve just released its first expabsion BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLES
[12:32 PM]Kieron: https://rowanrookanddecard.com/product/die-scenario-1/Rowan, Rook and DecardDIE RPG Scenarios Vol 1: Bizarre Love Triangles – Rowan, Rook and D…Undergo wild changes and endure novel dangers in this sourcebook for DIE RPG.
[12:33 PM]Kieron: And that’s the basics! Back later. Looking forward to chatting
[7:35 PM]trevordevall:
I’m Trevor Devall, a professional voice actor and gamer of 40+ years. I run a YT channel called “Me, Myself and Die” that got started with solo games (which I had no idea people actually did). I’ve been designing my “sim-lite” game for a while now, and am showcasing it on the channel before I launch the KS later this summer.
[7:30 PM]Wyloch: Hi! I’m Bill, and I run the YouTube channel Wyloch’s Armory. Just today, I reached the funding goal for the first print run of my new cyberpunk/sci-fi TTRPG: Neon Skies. Today’s discourse seems to be around so-called “old school” or “high crunch” as opposed to “rules lite” or “rules get out of the way.” Personally, I fall exactly in the middle. I don’t believe a character sheet should EVER be longer than one page. But I like to roll a lot of dice. But I don’t want to do any mental math or have to track modifiers. But I wanted a system that still had a lot of breadth in its outcome, mathematically speaking. And so, about six years ago, inspired by the dice pool mechanic from the Vampire the Masquerade, I started to design my own. Then, during a hard drive cleanup, I found an old short story I’d begun back in high school (2003). It was about a world that deployed satellite-based internet, became dependent upon it, and then Kessler Syndrome struck, setting everything back to the stone age. That became the premise for what ultimately became Neon Skies. Believe me, I have no patience for re-hashes. I don’t like the current gold rush we’re seeing in the TTRPG sphere. Innovation – like, true innovation – is hard to come by. The way Neon Skies handles vehicle chases, combat, and hacking are – to my knowledge – a first. My goal is to abstract things JUST ENOUGH that gameplay is fast, but so that the players still feel like their preparation and their choices MATTER. I contend that some amount of crunch is necessary for that satisfaction. Lastly, during this chat, I am listening to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJeK_rEMAng
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Jonathan Belle
Synthwave and Chillwave Radio | Chill, Game, Study, Edit To
[7:32 PM]Matt Vancil: Hi! My name is Matt Vancil, and I am the writer/director of The Gamers: Dorkness Falls, aka Gamers 4, which is Kickstarting until June 29. We are currently 53% funded and we haven’t even hit the midpoint of our campaign, so spirits are high.
[7:34 PM]Matt Vancil: The film is the fourth in the Gamers series, which began with The Gamers (2002), but didn’t branch into features until The Gamers: Dorkness Rising (2008), which had a sequel in THe Gamers: Hands of Fate (2013). There were other short series and another whole series that’s crowdfunding its second episode in July.
[7:35 PM]Matt Vancil: The series features gamers gaming. The movies have been called “the real Dungeons & Dragons movies” by folks who say that sort of thing. Years back, Ranker did a list of the top 10 D&D movies, and Dorkness Rising and The Gamers took the top two spots.
[7:36 PM]Zoe – The Maniculum: Hello!! My name is Zoe Franznick, and I’m co-host of the Maniculum podcast, where myself and my co-host adapt medieval stories into TTRPG adventures. We’re both medievalists and game designers, and my work has been nominated for Nebula and Bafta, and has won a Peabody and GDC award for best Narrative. Our project, the Marginal Worlds Magic Item Deck, is a deck of 50 system-agnostic magic items pulled directly from medieval manuscripts. We’ve done all the hard work of translating, playtesting, and so on so that each item is ready-to-play in any system! (done)