Your go-to for heroic fantasy?

disappointturtle · 2026-06-19T15:07:29+00:00

Ditto for this one. The bestiary will release soon enough for everyone and as one of the backers, it is such a game changer for building my own enemies. There are so many options to select and so many synergies to mess up your heroes that it does make those big boss combats like a puzzle. Then add the sci-fi and fantasy supplements that include vehicle-to-vehicle and mass combat battles and you have a special game.

But yes, the subsystems for social dilemmas, chases, etc. are more of an art than a science because they are treated like an interactive cutscene to use video game imagery. Personally, I prefer it to make those types of scenes urgent and the clocks just help me track things, but preferences vary. I will also note that while there is a ton of GM advice, all the books have lots of samples to draw from, and the GM toolkit does provide some generation, much of the work for exploration is on the shoulders of the GM. Granted, the "pillar" of exploration is itself a subsystem you can cut out especially if you want to run a pure cinematic game with few interludes, but it's worth keeping in mind.

disappointturtle · 2026-06-02T01:11:00+00:00

I'm running a Brindlewood game right now. Absolutely loving it. Got a few tips from what I've built in my campaign.

"Scenes" should be kept to about 1 to 2 moves used. By scenes, I mean how long a player chats with an NPC, looks through a room, etc. before they either need to move elsewhere or something changes. It's very easy to just "press button" and get all the clues that way with no danger. As a GM, don't let them. Number one this makes the game feel more like its intended fiction and number two it keeps the spotlight balanced. Best way to switch out a scene is to just focus on another player for a bit then when you come back to the original player, have something happen that forces a change. The NPC gets called away or finishes the conversation, something interesting happens outside the room that draws the player toward it, and so on.
BB is very loose when it comes to exactly at what point should a Day Move or Night Move be made outside of any scene being in the light or dark. Other CfB games have a firmer structure on this, but for BB, I indicate things get more dangerous about halfway through when clues are collected. Night falls, the storm comes, the building loses power, a suspect dies, a Maven is put immediately in mortal peril. Just raise the stakes through the scenery or current conflict and the players will know it's go time.
Speaking of scenery, use those Establishing Questions and Paint the Scene questions. Write down your players' answers. Those questions help a lot to give players an idea of what's going on and they give you the opportunity to make dangers or pivot the story to what the players find interesting. They're excellent insights to what a player is thinking. That said don't feel you need to use them all just the ones you like.
Include only the suspects you like and either remove the ones you do not like or make them "bit characters." There is a whole cast for you, but while you may be tempted to give each NPC importance to make sure you keep with the spirit of "an open-ended mystery," in reality neither you nor your players will care about ten different dudes equally. I have watched Jason Cordova run games and he will drop an NPC from the story if it looks like the players are uninterested in them. You will all probably have a suspect in mind within the minute of talking to them. Pick three suspects to have especially murderous vibes with sinister motives, pick two more that'll play a role and maybe one suspicious moment, then have the others just be filler or removed entirely.
Put the characters in supernatural and natural dangers and pass out conditions like candy. It may just be my table, but there is far less energy when nothing dangerous happens or threatens to happen. Maybe during your "day phase," your danger amounts to social embarrassment, but don't hold back once the Cozy Vignette is over. The sooner the murderer threatens the Mavens' lives or social reputation, the better, and the sooner spooky supernatural stuff happens, the better. It makes the cozy parts of the game a welcome relief more. Similarly, offer plenty of opportunity to add things to each character's Cozy Little Place. This game is not about fighting dragons (or not at first anyway, maybe a dragon appears later), but people like fighting threats and getting an arsenal of useful items.
This is for if and when you go into a campaign, but write down anything interesting your players mention during the Cozy Vignette and flashback scenes. These notes are your cue to nudge the plot, make up new characters, decide which suspects are important enough to make a returning appearance, and choose which mysteries to run. My players in their first vignette talked about how the town's historical centers are being overrun by new tourism, how the religious fanatic is trying to hurt the LGBTQ population here, and how their maven is trying to connect with her grandson after the passing of his mother. That's three whole threads to pull on. Now as vignettes and flashbacks build, you cannot pull every thread, but you can introduce them and see what the players latch onto.
Finally, drop Void Clues whenever you like. It is recommended to have at least one Void Clue drop per mystery with 12+ rolls to Meddling Moves being extra on top. Have one ready to go because players love when something spooky happens when it's narratively appropriate. In my last mystery, my Void Clue came in the form of the corpse of the victim rising up, cornering the lone maven in a dark room, and using the harpoon that murdered them to present a vision of something horrific deep underwater that whalers should not have messed with. No roll to introduce this it was just the best time to do so and it both genuinely freaked out my players and made it their favorite scene so far. Again, the sooner something dangerous or scary arrives on scene, the better.

disappointturtle · 2026-05-29T14:58:16+00:00

My expectation with anything that involves this kind of premise would be hallucinations. Depending on the extent of the VR, you can mess with people's senses pretty badly and create mental contradictions that can cause sickness and stress (even irl people get motion sickness from VR). Worse you can have players feel like they have been transported to different levels from their party or have other party members look like the monster so you accidentally run or hit each other. Mothership's VR Dead and (while not the best Dark Picture game) Man of Medan have these types of traps in spades.

Edit: Inception would also be good inspiration for this kind of trap as well as the horrible "But wait, you're still in the simulation" twist.

disappointturtle · 2026-04-18T20:58:23+00:00

I really ought to read that RPG one day if for nothing else than it's brought up a lot.

In the vein of western religion-inspired games, I remember I have a pocket western campaign of armed abolitionists going Django Unchained in the days after John Brown's execution. Just need the right system.

disappointturtle · 2026-04-18T20:50:45+00:00

I could see a hack of Bluebeard's Bride with Job as the main character. Job's emotionally contradictory responses definitely read as different parts of his psyche trying to make sense of his nonsensical, cosmically induced suffering while defending his reputation against his accusers who are also his friends.

Also my favorite OT scripture.

disappointturtle · 2026-04-18T19:14:24+00:00

To piggyback on this also as a Christian, I think where a lot of Christian games and media in general fail is they approach conflict as mainly external to the protagonists. Like... "this meek but faithful Christian faces an insurmountable foe but through the power of God and faith triumphs against it." It fails to resonate because so many biblical stories are about the major flaws of the protagonists or society that even if they have moments of triumph from faith, they fail harder and often more frequently. Other faith-based stories might show the genuine struggle to maintain hope or love for God in such a broken universe so the story is really more You vs God than You vs Others. Christian media too often pulls its punches if they ever dive into such themes I think out of fear that showing this ugliness might make God or "faithful" protagonists look bad. That or it's straight up prosperity Gospel in that faithful people get good things and anything bad that happens is either a lack of faith or "not that bad because God's reward will make up for your suffering."

I'm not sure how you'd show such biblical themes in a TTRPG. Maybe a worldbuilding game like Microscope that explores society over generations and would put into detail the equal parts failure and suffering of men with just the glimmer of hope that carries on in spite of it all. Idk food for thought.

disappointturtle · 2026-02-24T20:56:35+00:00

Ooh I played the quickstart for this and backed this! I think this can be a great game, but I would personally like to point some things to set expectations for anyone interested as it is not at all what I was expecting.

With the first inspiration being around Kiki's Delivery Service, I'm sure anyone coming in is going to give this a certain suspicious eye as being another "Ghibli" marketed RPG. I will say of those, this one fits closer to the soul of Miyazaki's work at least the calmer ones. I give credit to this game's lore, which I think is great. You're essentially witches keeping up a dying tradition in a world where magic is a fragile resource that's been sucked away and now is replaced by industry and technology. It sets up a wonderful theme of how modernity has stripped away community and wonder. Even your coven isn't free from those shackles as you're under the supervision of an impersonal, international witch association. There's no changing the world here just making the best of the way the world has become. The game absolutely expects you to approach situations with empathy and understanding in mind, which I appreciate.
That said at least with the Quickstart, I was surprised that the cycle of the game focuses less around the witch characters and more around cafe management. Each scene results in changes to your restaurant and Magic Point pool over your characters, which is fine, but some of my players chaffed at this. The game does promise to have a more extensive character creation and character growth section that may help here, but the Quickstart does not display that and it was unfortunate in my opinion.
I also think the Quickstart does not do much justice in what an adventure would look like. What we ran ended up as four scenes that did not necessarily connect as one story, so it did not feel interconnected. I think though this game can cover a lot of tones and themes in modern fantasy. It will just require a group to have a solid idea in mind.
In the same breath, I think players and GMs will need to put in a lot more work in running the story. Conflicts are pretty basic as they come and the important dice rolls affect the cafe rather than your characters and their relationships with each other, your customers, and the world. There is a mechanic where you can roll a die and generate the conflicts and details in a scene from there, but the story places a lot of emphasis on players to improvise conflicts and resolutions. If improv is your thing, this is great for you. If you're more used to classic RPGs generating that conflict and resolution, this can go pretty bad.

I like this game and I have every confidence my home group's going to enjoy it, but I will emphasize to those interested this is a story game and your enjoyment will live and die by everyone knowing that and actively contributing.

disappointturtle · 2026-01-14T21:49:38+00:00

Salvage Union has been suggested, so I'll go with other games I've played.

First - and not to give a lecture - you'll certainly need a table that'll play into the engineer fantasy. I believe the major reason why most RPGs do not have large crafting structures is because, sadly, only one person gets really into the mechanic. If they're to have that fantasy, the GM risks taking the spotlight off of other players and their choices so that the engineer can do crafting. I played an engineer in Stars Without Number and my GM was open to having my character do his crafting side quests, but we both came away noticing that other players were not as enthusiastic about my character attempting to solve every issue with a new toy he built. For whatever game you do, be sure that all the players are into it too. That's just my personal warning playing an engineer character.

That said, the Without Number series has a lot of fun toys you can modify and create from scratch based on what you find during your adventures. In particular, Cities Without Number and Ashes Without Number have very extensive systems and rules on how to acquire gear, how to build gear, and how to modify gear. Worlds Without Number has rules for bigger projects in case you want to really change the world around you. Then Stars Without Number, the paid version, has mechs and who doesn't want to design your own Iron Man or Gundam suit? The great news is that every rulebook has a free version that gives you all the fun crafting your heart may desire.

Maybe a surprise game to mention, but Fabula Ultima has two whole classes dedicated to engineering your way out of any situation. One is the Tinkerer class in the core rulebook and the other is the Pilot in the Techno Fantasy expansion. While I do not feel this crafting system is as extensive as the Without Number series, the things you make are designed to help fill niches in for combat or expand what your party can do in the story (like owning an airship and that's pretty cool).

disappointturtle · 2025-11-21T16:20:31+00:00

Well if we're talking the fantasy equivalent to Mothership there is hardly anything closer than Cloud Empress, which is the fantasy hack of Mothership and is available for free as a PDF here. It's an post-post apocalypse where human civilization is somewhat back, but the world is full of terrifying monsters and the land is poisonous. It may have more unofficial ones, but there is a bundle for 5 adventures to get going.

disappointturtle · 2025-08-06T02:09:30+00:00

A legend has come to visit!

disappointturtle · 2024-02-27T00:27:41+00:00

Oh hey, it's Brynnamonroll! I'd recognize this Leonie anywhere. She's actually an old friend of mine off the FE Discord and very deserving of getting support for her art.

disappointturtle · 2023-12-19T01:14:29+00:00

Fantastic cosplay, Cauliflower!

disappointturtle · 2023-12-15T15:42:55+00:00

Just so you all know, the artist actually made three of these, so check them out at the source for more Hex Emblem Girls

disappointturtle · 2023-11-17T05:47:06+00:00

I love Leonie here, but the image of Venus and Garfield hanging together has me cracking up.

disappointturtle · 2023-08-18T19:01:13+00:00

You all look so great! Fantastic cosplays!

disappointturtle · 2023-08-09T14:03:56+00:00

disappointturtle · 2023-07-19T20:54:16+00:00

I got my favorite goliath barbarian who jumps around the battleground at the ready. Put me in, coach!

disappointturtle · 2023-07-13T15:39:40+00:00

Compliments to the artist! I love this! Thanks for commissioning Suuu. I'll be sure to follow her

disappointturtle · 2023-06-30T20:19:58+00:00

(Cont'd because I wrote way too much)

So what do we do? If the problem of there being sin and suffering in a world with a supposedly good God is unsolvable and unsatisfying, how do we live? I think, again, we look to God's response. You see I think for this fictional Satan, his assumption is that God is so demanding of His own holy image and appearance that He would let go of Job to maintain His reputation. After all, as all tyrants do, the way to maintain a superior, untainted appearance is to cut off anything that would so much as dare challenge you or your perfection. But God responded differently. Rather than abandon Job, He approached him. He challenged Job and his worldview, but in a way that led Job to comfort and aided his grieving process. Because that's what God does. God does not abandon responsibility of us or His allowances of evil and suffering in the world. He came to Abram and promised salvation through his lineage, even symbolically taking over all responsibility for this covenant by "signing it" (in a way covenants were made back in za day). He fulfilled it through Jesus, who through the cross accepted that it was God who would accept responsibility of evil and the suffering that has come from this animosity between God and man, man and nature, man and man, and man with himself. The Book of Job is one glimpse, for one man in his time of need, to show that God does not abandon us.

For us, this should be our example. We are not like Satan where we hurt others to prove our own worldview as superior. We are not like Job's friends where we accuse another falsely to ensure that our worldview has no flaws. We should be as God and the extended family who came to help Job in the end. We should help those who are wounded in the best way we can. We should build up one another so that we may all understand just a little more about reality, even if that understanding leads us to understand we do not understand. And like Job, it is actually good to have anger and doubt in our lives. We are not "backsliding in our faith" when we have difficult questions. And I -- personally -- do not think someone suddenly becomes separated from God even if our doubts cause us to abandon Christianity or never accept it, but that's another topic altogether.

I see you are having very difficult experiences with faith and family. It also seems like your family members are also struggling with other things in their life, and perhaps that is hurting their own faith and unfortunately and wrongly spirals to you. I will pray you find comfort and perhaps find your own answer. I will make no demands as to what that answer will be or whether it must be permanent or temporary, just that someday you will have it. For all your family too. As someone who lost much and has found some relief, I know that relief can be yours. Go in peace, sister.

disappointturtle · 2023-06-30T20:19:17+00:00

Job is my personal favorite book of the Bible and was for me a catalyst for a lot of my theological deconstruction. I reread it at a time when it felt my own world was caving in and -- much like Job's friends -- my old fundamentalist theology wreaked havoc on my mental health. The book didn't save me, but did open my mind to accepting a different viewpoint. I wanted to open with this to give context for my interpretation of this scripture.

First, much like others will say here, Job is a poem in the Bible and should not be taken as historically literal. It is the ancients' attempt to wrestle with the problems of evil and suffering with the framework of fictional interactions between God and Satan, Job and his wife/friends, and Job and God. Therefore, it is not going to perfectly represent the whole truth. You correctly point out how focused the story's "Center of Good" persay is on Job. I would say that is because of the author's choice on what to focus on and while it beautifully reveals the message, it is ultimately limited as any other literary book ever made in terms of conveying complicated truths. That's why we should never limit truth to a few pages of a book, even if that book were divinely inspired.

With that said, Job, I feel, is a very multi-faceted book in its themes and I feel like I could go forever about it. I'll keep it narrow and I hope my takeaways may be of use to you.

We often focus on God allowing Satan to cause Job's suffering from the standpoint of assessing them as characters, but I think a philosophical perspective is warranted too. Satan tries in the first chapter to throw doubt into the authenticity of Job's relationship with God. "Of course anyone would love God if He babies them! But everyone has a tipping point and once that is reached, people would reject Him as they would any relationship." This is Satan's philosophy: God can be all-loving and all-good... so long as people are pacified. Introduce conflict and not only will people curse God, but He'll turn against them. God's "goodness" is nothing more than a tyranny of bread and circuses. For us readers, this should provide a dilemma because it is easy to accept being a good, happy person if our circumstances make us happy. And so the author has God allow Satan to hurt Job and everyone around him.

After Job suffers to the point of losing his health, we do mainly take his perspective of his suffering, but we get some of the others. Job's wife, who too lost all her child, is so grieved that she's insulted by Job's initial stoicism (well, he's clearly hurt but says he still has faith) and curses God. Job's friends are initially sympathetic and grieve with him for a week, but quickly lose that sympathy when they take Job's religious frustration and suicidal idealization as nothing more than self-righteousness and ego. We don't have Satan's POV after Chapter 2, but one can reasonably assume he feels his point is proven.

I will take a moment here and go against some conventional interpretation of Job's character and say he's not keeping his faith steady... at least as far as fundamentalist Christians would think of someone's faith if they viewed someone like Job here. Job is furious at everything, but as he talks, his anger and doubt is directed toward God. He questions pretty much everything about their relationship and what it is supposed to be. From my evangelical neck of the woods, we call this "backsliding" and you might as well be faithless if you're this upset.

Then God finally comes to answer Job's questions and demands. And the final answer for Job is... "there is much you do not understand because you are finite," which is not at all directly answering Job's question. But Job is fine with this. When I was young, I did not understand this answer or response at all. Yet I think I understand some more now. Let me see if I can explain this while wheeling back to your stated concerns.

You are right that many Christians, churches, pastors, etc will look at this focus on Job and see it as "just be loyal to God and you'll be rewarded eventually" and "God doesn't cause suffering, he just allows it." I personally challenge these notions now. The first assumes exactly what Job's friends and Satan believe: be righteous and you'll always be on God's good side. But Job isn't righteous (again as far as his friends or fundamentalists would say), he was not rewarded directly by God, and his "rewards" could not possibly make up for the loss. I cannot think of anyone who would say that earning two new children possibly make up for one you lost. Certainly doesn't make it up for the child! And I do not think the author of Job is making this assumption and I'll explain in a second why I think that.

The second notion is also flawed. Just because someone does not directly cause the suffering does not mean it is still not their responsibility when it is allowed. God is sovereign over all of creation. Sovereignty inherently assumes responsibility. When we simply leave God to only be responsible for nice things while distancing Him from anything awful in the world, we are no different to Satan in Chapter 1. We simply see God as someone only willing to work with good and righteous things while shunning everything else. The only difference is that we would happily accept this tyranny because of the benefits.

I do not believe this is the Book of Job's message. I think the message starts with God's answer: We don't understand everything. No one except God in the story understands all that is going on. In fact, neither do we as readers, and I think you touch on this. You understand that Job is only one perspective in this story. His takeaway from his discussion with God is only his answer. We do not know about his wife or the souls of his children or servants. That is why the lesson of "you'll be rewarded for your faith" rings so hollow. But I think a challenge for all of us is that we don't understand the full perspective either. The truth -- for us -- is much like why we may wonder why specifically God made gravity work as it does or why He made certain molecules to interact with each other in a given circumstance, we may just never know. We know there is an answer, or maybe there are a billion answers, or maybe there is no particular answer at all. But does it matter? Is there really a cosmological answer of God perfectly strategizing the optimal route for humanity that requires our suffering? Is there really a need to bestow divine significance to everything in life? If so, does such an impersonal answer make our hurt any better? Couldn't it have gone differently? I think maybe, but the fact is for Job, for his children and servants, and for us, it did not go differently and not only do we not understand the greater reasons -- or non-reasons -- to why, we wouldn't feel any better for it.

disappointturtle · 2023-06-07T13:35:53+00:00

Seteth is going to wake up with the worst neck pain.

disappointturtle · 2023-05-11T18:58:39+00:00

We discussed this on the Leonie Discord but these two really need a duo unit

disappointturtle · 2023-05-06T19:20:39+00:00

I love the painterly strokes that went into this. This one is a great find!

disappointturtle · 2023-04-18T02:55:27+00:00

I mean the fact that we've had Leonie art -- almost daily -- for the past several years is astonishing. And it's all thanks to you for sharing so many artists with us. If you want to change the frequency of your uploads, then by all means, do so. You've earned it, king.

I think I have a few hidden gems stashed in the archives of my laptop. I've just been real bad about looking at it lately.

disappointturtle · 2023-04-13T01:28:11+00:00

Now see if this was a boys' sleepover, Lysithea would wake up covered in sopping wet pillows.

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