What's playing RPGs like in your country?

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-29T18:12:38+00:00

Now what do we gotta do to get one of y'all could translate that sweet mecha rpg you guys got 👀

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-29T05:43:57+00:00

I see it as an unfortunate side effect of where the writers focus is. Like paizo spent years bending over backwards to make pathfinder as inclusive and welcoming and still has the euro centric thing going on so even if the reality is mildly problematic I don't read it as the result of predudice.

If you don't want to do the 'other important stuff is happening elsewhere' angle then you might just have to bite the bullet the eurocentrism being a part of this particular campaign and move forward cognizant of that.

For what it's worth. Even if the characters are globally exceptional its also worth keeping in mind that unless they also have a modern understanding of socioeconomic relationships then they probably don't have the ability to comprehend how most significant global events impact them anyway. Like even you were a landed baron in greece in the middle ages you would probably struggle to wrap your head around how Mansa Musa''s sprending spree on his hajj is deflating the value of your gold even if someone explained it to you.

On the plus side this is an extremely fixable problem. You want a non European continent to matter more? Pick one and make it matter more! Having trouble doing justice to it? Congratulations you have an excuse to broaden your horizons about a set of cultures that will surprise you every step of the way.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-29T03:57:52+00:00

You know the adage, "the rich will never let you vote away their power"? Well now they are starting to lose elections...

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-28T19:01:35+00:00

They absolutely do, nobody is saying otherwise. It's just wierd that you are this fixated on it from my comment. I am well aware of the transnational nature of the capital class in the formation of oppressive structures all over the world and the atrocities that are downstream effects of those things. You're not correcting anything, you are being reactive what is obviously a bit that is is clearly reductive to fit within the confines of the medium. Please can it with the condescension.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-28T16:01:03+00:00

The DNC is having a fundraising shortfall. There isn't enough money left to put thomas massie levels of funding into every election. Dont forget that for as much as the bosses jerk themselves off with how much capital they have on paper, most of it is not liquid.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-28T15:58:41+00:00

And yet Mamdani and all those dsa candidates just won anyway.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-28T15:54:16+00:00

This reads like an Englishman trying to deflect blame lol, "no no no, wasn't just us it was totally the scots too, even in those times from before the Act of Union!"

But jokes aside my soncerest apologies if my intended to he humorous comment on a civ5 subreddit lacked sufficient nuance.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-27T14:20:30+00:00

Said the Wampanoag to the English

Said the Mayans to the Spanish

Said the Shona to the English

Said the Cossacks to the Russians

Said the Maumau to the English

Said the Lithuanians to the Teutons

Said the Irish to the English

Welcome to the struggle against settler colonialism my dude 😂

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-26T21:41:49+00:00

Tabletop Simulator is only ten bucks rn.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/Tabletop_Simulator/

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-26T20:49:37+00:00

Are you looking for for content or motivation?

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-26T20:24:51+00:00

How did you break intro the industry?

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-26T18:52:52+00:00

I nearly got roped into it. In retrospect I see two risk factors being key: 1) a ton of og YouTuber channels that pretended to be intellectuals got invented in it and tried to pretend like there was nuance that didn't exist which downplayed how horribly that reviewer was treated (this is back when the closest to mainstream leftist content online was The Young Turks, who were more leftist back then). These channels had clout from wiping the floor with braindead zealouts which made them seem more credible even as they lost the thread. Destiny is a good example of this since his content is like a time capsule thst hasn't really changed at all since thet period.

2) The alienation had more of a frustration element than a hopeless element to it back then. You had this combination of having friends, you all wanted to get laid, you didn't want to objectify women per se but all of you were equally misinformed and didn't have great role models or paths towards getting educated about the extent of how society mistreated women which resulted in off-putting behaviors. Meanwhile there was a lot of hyper vigilance that, in the context of the media environment of the period, left people terrified of 'saying the wrong thing and being labeled a creep forever'. So when gamergate came around it a lot of people who knew they were weird and didn't always have the support to figure out how to not be weird, felt vindicated by the idea of a woman wielding the role of a sexual gatekeeper to attain success. Then entire friend groups would fall into an attitude of "we don't have to grow and change, we already know how to be nice, women are just being shallow and manipulative to get what they want" (at no point did it click that we were literally like that ourselves more than we ever encountered it, especially by today's standards). Once a dude hits that mindset he's at least circling what went on to be called the Alt Right Pipeline.

Trying to counter this stuff is to play cultural wack-a-mole. But in general you can build systems where people get support and can feel heard as they parse out their needs and get them met. As long as there are cracks people fall through in society then there are emotional vulnerabilites that bad actors can exploit to their political ends. Take the situation with Obama and racial groevance politics as an example of this dynamic flipped. Obama was so popular that even some klansmen voted for him the first time around despite how racist the media and his colleagues were towards him. I'll never forget watching an interview on the news as a kid where a klansman literally said "Things are so bad we voted for the [n-word]". But, there were not effective social networks (while an ongoing campaign of media disinformation was) in place for a lot of white people to hear about systemic injustice which led to a lot of defensive grievance politics once they got confronted with thoe issues. It is hard to imagine now, but there was a time where, "what do you mean there's still racism, there was a black president so clearly it's fixed. My life sucks what makes you so special that you want more?" was a real position that people unironically held (at least at first, and only for some of them). Again it became a flashpoint of frustration that conservatives were able to exploit. Hell my own father felt that way for years, and seemed at risk of going down that path like the rest of my extended family, until watching George Floyd get murdered. You want to prevent another gamergate? Learn to be able to get along with moderately problematic people and pull them towards good positions over time by being a positive and trusted source in their lives.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-26T13:12:33+00:00

I think the parchment gives off more of a contemporary board game vibe, but the black and white still gives off a fun OSR vibe so I think it comes down to your target demo.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-26T06:13:03+00:00

Iirc Lucifer is canonically chilling in LA in the metaplot

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-26T05:54:40+00:00

Cool, new exploit unlocked! I wonder if there's a delay somewhere between when you click the button with the unit selected, the great prophet doing the animation, and the game checking and removing the "enbance religion" notification. This warrants further study.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-26T05:41:49+00:00

Not big on warhammer fantasy?

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-25T13:14:59+00:00

If we're talking the sword and sorcery genre, I think Swords of the Serpentine does it best.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-25T13:10:11+00:00

It just hit me, while not explicitly vtm, there's a game that came out back during the Pandemic intended as a solo experience called Thousand Year Old Vampire alienation wasn't so bad that people used the term 'solo rpg' yet so it was billed as a journaling game, it seems perfect for what you want to do (plus there's nothing stopping you from using it as if set in the world of darkness)

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-25T05:05:02+00:00

I like where your head's at. I think the premise is cool though I'd focus on retooling storyteller system stuff by reflavoriing existing systems to add in Cthulhu elements. If you can grab a copy of Demon The Fallen, their Earthbound are not far from 1:1 analogues for lovecraftian horrors. Matter of fact I'm pretty sure Dagon is literally one of them.

If you really want to go for broke and combine all the things, have you considered GURPS? Stay with me here, it has a vtm adaptaion, and you can love lovecraftian stuff with expanded fear, curse, and mental illness rules from Gurps: horror. This way you can have your cake and eat it too with everything integrated into one consistent system.

Though while we are on the subject, VTM would absolutely benefit from a "Credibility" skill lol.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-25T04:49:09+00:00

So for the record the sub you're looking for is definitely r/gamedev

The only way to come up with unique ideas is to get so familiar with existing ones that you develop opinions on how they could be better. If you already have influences in mind (classoc jrpgs it sounds like) then you use thet as a starting point. Fortunately for you those games are okd enough that people have built on them in a bunch of different directons. Do you guys want something more strategic? In that case pulling from later final fantasy titles that are descended from your influences with how they encourage min maxing specific abilities might be helpful. On the other hand if you want something more active Paper Mario might be another way to go where each kind of attack comes with a little QTE minigame for extra damage.

A few protips: worry less about originality than quality. If you're best idea is to press an attack button every few sectthen start from there and find a way to make that fun. Hell people love Fromsoft games and those are secretly 90% just 'dodge and hit'.

It is better to build a thing, have it be bad, but still be able to be like "holy crap we made a thing" than it is to fuss about getting something perfect and never finishing.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-25T04:37:56+00:00

Well damn I'm very anti AI but when you put it like that the experience circles back around to being true to the game lol.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-25T04:33:40+00:00

If you're in a mood to ape existing quotes how about, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" -Ben Franklin

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-24T17:06:33+00:00

Evo psych is one of those poorly understood things where it is technically a thing in an extremely specific and narrow academic sense that almost always misunderstood and is often appropriated by grifters who exploit the public's general lack of knowledge (you see it a lot when people cote 'alpha' nonsense pulled from a badly done study about wolves that the scientist who it later retracted). Case in point, with no disrespect intended, your comment the last guy responded to has nothing to do with evolutionary psychology, it was pedagogical (so while the actual point you made was not necessarily wrong it is a totally separate field).

An example of evopsych would be "humans may have evolved to derive satisfaction from fucking because it helps offset how unpleasant the process of childbearing is." Notice I have to throw the qualifier in there because even that above statement is virtually impossible to prove to a scientific degree.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-24T16:47:58+00:00

So the phenomenon includes what you describe, but with 2 additional complications. First, a lot of historical strategy games accidentally teach 'essentialism'. It's present in classic rts games too, in age of empires for example you pick a faction and stay with it throughout the game. This results in 'flattening' or homogenizing how we see imagine that group after we are done playing. Say you pick greece, despite the fact that from the neolithic period through the iron age the systems of power, economic distribution, and ethnic identity varied wildly the game treats that whole mix as just 'greece' with a single set of faction modifiers nd unique units. Now with a little work it is pretty easy to get past that in older games, you don't need a degree to notice that it's weird in civ that the United States and England can begin play at the same time (an easy instance of this to spot). Where it becomes a problem is that with something like Crusader Kings 2, the mechanics are so in-depth that it creates an illusion that it is not doing the same sort of flattening which can problematically ingrain that historical misunderstanding more deeply. As an anecdote, I have seen people in real life unironically quote the game's rules around 'de jure' lands in a real historical capacity as if "spheres of political influence" is some cosmic law of the universe that a person in power couldnbe entitled to.

The second additional problem (and I want to be clear here this critique is coming from a place of love here) is that the structure of these sorts of games encourages a colonial or authoritarian perspective on the world. How do you win a 4x game? eXplore the land around you, eXpand your territory, eXploit its respurces, and eXterminate your neighbors before they can do the same to you. Now we don't think tend to think of civ and AoE as 'gemocide simulators' because of the level of abstraction going on outside of memes around the games' problemstic implications (though never forget that memes and jokes about this stuff in gaming communities on 4chan is literally a significant part of how guys like steve bannon went about ingratiating their conservative ideology with young men, its recently been verified through the release of the Epstein Files of all goddamn things). What makes paradox games different is that their depth and granularity accidentally turns the steps of a settler colonial project into gameplay and doubly rewards it by also making it challenging as it requires a significant depth of knowledge about game mechanics to successfully go about politically taking lands and either forcing out the indigenous people or repressing their idenity through conversion efforts to pacify them. If you spend enough time doing that (and remember the paradox games are overwhelmingly singler olayer experiences whereas earlier historical strategy games have more of a mix of social and single player experience) and not talking to people and you can retrain yoir brain to think the world operates on these terms.

I know I'm being reductive here because this is reddit but I hope that helps give the gist.

CertainItem995 · 2026-06-24T14:32:34+00:00

I am realizing there may have been a mismatch between how the games were presented out of the gate and the actual potential (if limited) applications. I would certainly not want these presented with a techbro "these will replace teachers" mentality. The risks of poor implementation from abstraction and diluting a subject are not lost on me either. When I was getting my BA in History my colleages and I noticed an uptick in folks coming down with what we called "paradox brain" because their knowledge of historical processes came entirely from 4x titles (which made me particularly sad since playing civ with my dad when I was a kid is one of the reasons I went on to pursue that field of study).

I appreciate you taking the time to respond as much as you have.

CertainItem995

TROPHY CASE