TTRPG Community Newsletter 25th November

Hey folks! Welcome to the second edition of the TTRPG community newsletter. In today’s post you can expect a short sharp dish of tabletop-related news. (A short sharp dish? Really??)

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That’s enough preamble.

That’s enough Dwayne. Down boy!

No Rest for the Wicked

First-time module writer Ryan Loos’ spooky adventure has hit Copper best seller on the DMs Guild. Not bad going for a first brew!

This Ravenloft adventure has the players stuck in a time loop on a lightning train. It promises an “investigation Groundhog Day horror mystery”. That sounds interesting to me. Done well that would be great. Done badly it would suck like watching Groundhog Day on repeat.

Fortunately, and wisely, to help out would-be time-loop GMs the author has provided tips, tricks, tools, levers and more to help the game run smoothly (unlike the train itself).

I’m also curious as to what exactly a puzzle-like sandbox-on-rails adventure looks like!

If you’re as curious as me you can find the adventure waiting for you in the station (AKA DMs Guild)

Aegean: The Isle of Pelops

Next up we’ve got a Kickstarter from the we evolve team. The same guys who brought us the trippy WILD RPG and the original Aegean.

Aegean is a game about mythic heroes building a new, free city on the shores of the Aegean Sea. Dealing with neighbouring cities, wars, monsters and gods is all just par for the course.

The Isle of Pelops, the third expansion to the game, provides history and mythology of the Peloponnesos (an area of Southern Greece if, like me, you didn’t know). There’s also adventure hooks, new character backgrounds and options, and more besides.

The areas covered include Olympia (want to role-play in the og. Olympic games?) and Sparta (in a weird coincidence I’m wearing my Sparta t-shirt today. irrelevant but cool)

If you’re interested, get in there soon as the project only has about a week left to go. It’s already funded so you don’t need to worry about that. This isn’t the team’s first rodeo either - it’s their fourth KS project - so you’re in safe hands.

There’s even a digital option for those who might find themselves somewhat strapped for cash, which I think is a nice touch.

Want to see more? Find the project over here on Kickstarter.

JamCrawler

This one is a change from the product releases and crowd-funders. MacGuffin and Co. are running a game jam to celebrate the release of the SRD and third party licence for their two-player fantasy TTRPG, Pitcrawler. (OK, this is very product release adjacent, but still!)

Pitcrawler was originally inspired by adventure gamebooks and it’s designed to play with one GM and one player.

JamCrawler is a game jam inviting game designers to riff-off or expand the Pitcrawler idea, or to throw caution to the wind and use the ‘crawler’ engine to make something weird and wonderful. The choice is yours!

The jam starts next week and you can find all the deets on Itch.

Xeno

Destroy. Conquer. Consume.

YOU ARE THE ALIEN.

That’s how the Itch page for Caligaes’ Xeno starts. That’s pretty bad-ass.

I don’t do this often but I’m just going to cut and paste from said Itch page. I think it summarises the game better than I could.

“Caligaes' XENO is a Mexican minimalist TTRPG in which players take on the role of a terrifying alien creature sent to Earth to atone for their sins.

The game is designed for 2 to 5 players, including the Alien Master, who can enjoy one-shots where they hunt humans, fight demons, and fulfill MOTHER's objectives.“

That sounds pretty different to me. The inspirations for the game listed include Alien, The Thing and X-Com. So I’ve got a rough idea what this might be like.

But you don’t have to guess as there is a free demo download available. Nice.

Dawn of the Orcs

Last up this week we’ve got another Kickstarter project. Bit of a change of pace on this one though. Dawn of the Orcs from Lyme is an ‘Orc-building fantasy TTRPG’.

It’s a GMless dark fantasy roleplaying and worldbuilding game. “In Dawn of the Orcs, you create the first Orcs to fight for you, modify them in an attempt to win a terrible war, and tell the story of how they become their own people.“ (Quoting again, sorry)

The game is designed to play in a high-paced, high-energy one-shot. Wrapping up within two hours. I’m not overly familiar with world-building games, but this one looks like it will be a short, fast romp.

One of the nice things about this project is they aim to deliver the digital version of the game within days of the project ending. No waiting months (or years!) for your goodies with this one!

The project is already funded, with around 3 weeks left to go. Find out more - and back it - on Kickstarter.

That’s a wrap folks. Hope you enjoyed this brief ride through recent TTRPG news and events. If you want to share your own news let us know by filling in our online form.

Until next time!
Adam RK.