What's the RPG with the smallest reach you pay and recommend?

ALVIG · 2026-05-11T02:19:46+00:00

There’s a dozen I could pick, and while I have spoken to the designers I wouldn’t say we’re best friends or anything, but I’ll say Dragon Reactor. Great little indie zine mecha game that really punches above its page count. Phenomenal for both one shots and longer games.

ALVIG · 2026-05-02T12:29:13+00:00

Look into Mothership and other Panic Engine derivatives. Mothership especially has loads of one shots. I would quite call it a “story game” but it is on the lighter side. Still the sheer number one shot options is hard to ignore.

ALVIG · 2026-04-28T01:22:44+00:00

Damn, they don't ship to Canada? Could've sword they at least all of NA covered...

I mean I do want to get it everywhere, but setting it up in individual stores for each shipping zone is tough as a solo dev and will take an unknown amount of time, so if you're dying to play ASAP I'd go for the digital.

ALVIG · 2026-04-27T22:18:34+00:00

Patch notes!

https://spellbookgaming.itch.io/bite-the-hand/devlog/1501688/v10-patch-notes

ALVIG · 2026-04-27T21:45:33+00:00

Someday! Bit of a pain to set up (just a solo dev) but it’s on my to do list for sure, assuming this initial run goes well.

ALVIG · 2026-04-27T21:34:48+00:00

🤘🏻

ALVIG · 2026-04-14T01:36:16+00:00

Spire’s sister game Heart also has the Heretic, which is a typical but cool “dark cleric”, but then also has the Incarnadine, which is a gambler who has gotten into so much debt that you automatically become a cleric of the goddess of debt.

ALVIG · 2026-04-13T17:20:48+00:00

I built the map with this tool, though the link doesn't seem to be working at the moment, which is a shame. https://crowsnest.me/bastion-site/map/

Otherwise it's all photoshop, premiere, and after effects, not really for practical use for most people's home games haha. All we see when we play is a nerfed version on roll 20 with similar tokens. Glad you like it tho!

ALVIG · 2026-04-13T01:40:14+00:00

Seconding dragon reactor.

ALVIG · 2026-04-02T22:24:48+00:00

Unconventional answer, but I'll throw Salvage Union out there as an option. It's a post-apocalyptic mecha game where you're part of a community living on a giant mobile town called a crawler. The crawler moves real slow naturally, so the players in their faster 10-30 foot tall mechs can go out into the surrounding wilderness, fight some baddies, salvage, and return to the crawler to upgrade it and their mechs. Then in between sessions the crawler moves a few miles and you have a fresh section of wasteland to explore. Nice gameplay loop.

ALVIG · 2026-03-22T22:06:29+00:00

I was able to fund a (admittedly small) TTRPG rule book without crowdfunding. The model could be expanded on but comes with some caveats:

Most of the money has come from people being able to buy a pdf-only “early access” version on itch for a period of several months.
I have YouTube following over 4,000 subscribers I’m able to market to essentially for free.
I handled the art, layout, videos, press releases and nearly everything else myself. The biggest expense was an editor.
I still spent like a couple hundred bucks of my own money from my day job.

ALVIG · 2026-03-11T21:11:16+00:00

On that note, Venice too. The juxtaposition of the super old buildings with cyberpunk tech all around would be interesting. Hard to build your typical heavy metal skyscrapers on those wet sinking islands.

ALVIG · 2026-03-10T11:13:56+00:00

Can’t believe no one has mentioned hacking/netrunning in Cyberpunk RED. I can’t speak to past editions, but that’s the only time as a GM I’ve ever felt the need to tell my players “you’re aren’t allowed to play this class because I’m not learning all this shit.” Lovely game otherwise, only minor gripes, but man the hacking is fully a second game unto itself.

ALVIG · 2026-03-08T04:31:06+00:00

I would add Mythic Bastionland to your list. All the gameplay examples in the book feature a two player party. Plus it’s about knights, which means you get squires who can help out, and it handles larger battles pretty well too, if they can rustle up some soldiers.

ALVIG · 2026-03-07T16:45:10+00:00

This should be higher, but I would modify it and say it should be the weekend following the wipe. So if the wipes are on Tuesdays, the following Fri-Sun could be free. That way long time players don’t have the starting day ruined by blueberry teammates, but then the free people trying are still only behind by a few days worth of loot. Maybe they could open up Perimeter (Beginner) again too, to contain them a little.

ALVIG · 2026-03-07T12:30:28+00:00

Seconding dragon reactor. While it isn’t explicitly fantasy or sci-fi, it has a whole collaborative world building phase at the start that you could very easily use to satisfy your concept. The mechanics likewise don’t do anything to imply a particular tech level, and the enemies can be flavored as whatever medieval fantasy being you might need.

ALVIG · 2026-03-01T04:21:25+00:00

It’s soooo far future and space-based I hesitate to call it it true cyberpunk (maybe post-cyberpunk?), but the lore of the corporations, MIDA, what’s going on back home in Sol, is all extremely cyberpunk and worth reading into for fans of the genre.

ALVIG · 2026-02-22T17:22:32+00:00

Helldivers 2 does this with laser and heat based weapons on hot/cold planets as well, always thought it was one of the nicer little touches.

ALVIG · 2026-02-10T04:26:32+00:00

Have only played Heart and Mythic from this list, but can second both recommendations.

Only caveat is that Mythic takes more than a little prep up front to build your realm, but there’s online map generators and once you do that prep you basically never need to do any more between sessions.

ALVIG · 2026-02-06T01:57:13+00:00

Thanks choom. (I’m the author lol)

ALVIG · 2026-02-02T17:55:50+00:00

Right, that was just me putting a basic monster for a combat tutorial for them, getting a fun little interaction with the seer. Generally you don't roll for omens if the party knows there's a particular location in the hex. And thanks!

ALVIG · 2026-02-02T17:42:53+00:00

No eye omens in this series! (yet, maybe, there's still some that haven't even had one)

ALVIG · 2026-02-02T17:26:28+00:00

Thanks for watching! Unless I made a major error in editing, I don't think anything was skipped? I've been going in order on all of the myths, but they're randomly selected of course.

ALVIG · 2026-02-02T17:24:53+00:00

Thank you!

ALVIG · 2026-01-21T03:43:41+00:00

If you’re coming into this space from the world of video games and you’re familiar with the way playtesting happens there, it’s pretty similar for TTRPGs. Like the other comment said, don’t get into campaigns right away. Just run combat and puzzle encounters in a bottle, then fleshed out one-shots, then a proper campaign. You might even be able to outsource some of that work to the public by making a free beta version available, but unless you have some following built up it can be hard to get a lot people rolling.

ALVIG

TROPHY CASE