Please note: this thread is intended to be the place for self-promotion.
Please keep blatant self-promotion out of the other design threads.
This thread is for you to tell others about your original system projects.
The Dark Sentencer
A prison escape game with a tarot-based system.
https://marns.itch.io/the-dark-sentencer
Dark Sentencer was written for the 2019 Record Collection Jam, and is a game where you and your friends play as a bunch of space criminals trying to escape a prison planet. It uses an original, tarot deck based system to guide players through character creation and to shape the outcome of the story, including the tone of each scene.
Pick of Destiny
A musical game about rocking demon's faces off.
https://marns.itch.io/pick-of-destiny
Pick of Destiny was also written for ReCo2k19, and is a game where you and your friends becoming a touring band that must battle against the Seven Lords of Hell, and Satan Himself in a series of fantasy rock-offs. It has a pretty simple d6-based rolling system, as well as a special object (the Pick of Destiny) that is passed from player to player to both give their character a buff and allow them to choose the background music for each battle.
The King Machine
A role-playing game of flying mountains and intelligent non-human primates.
https://vsca.itch.io/the-king-machine
The King Machine is the first Soft Horizon game, a series that leans into the style of early Heavy Metal comics. The system is designed for light extended play -- not a lot to learn, a short cheat sheet, but durable enough for campaign play. This first game focuses on a plane of flying mountains populated by intelligent non-human primates. Until just before the start of play, the world was a utopia -- a perfect king selected by machine. But now the machine is broken and the king is the wrong king. And now it becomes clear that although things are bad now, maybe it wasn't a utopia for everyone before either.
Spiral
A universal / setting agnostic, percentile based system.
https://thealeks.itch.io/spiral
The summary more or less says it all. Spiral is probably my biggest (it's an actual "book" at 175 pages) and crunchiest (although that's not saying much) game and is basically "yet another" universal tabletop rpg system that one can use to play all sorts of campaigns. It's designed to be flexible and accessible, and is kind of what would happen if the Cypher System and BRP had a baby together, I guess?
Low-Glamour Sci-Fi about down-on-their luck outlaws using an original system.
https://playtest.itch.io/hard-space-hustle
This game is in Alpha at the moment and is a part of my Play/Test project where I design and playtest my game on the podcast for everyone to listen to from the very first playtest. It uses all the polyhedral dice you love from DnD but in a more fun way meant to drive the story and resolve action in a few fast paced rounds rather than protracted swing-and-miss. Each Job (class) should fundamentally change the way you interact with the game and add it's own element to the narrative. Please check it out! The podcast can be found here!
Battles&Balances
A rule system for computer RPGs
https://notimetoplay.itch.io/battles-and-balances
It may seem odd to write here about a rule system for computer RPGs, but really, it uses real dice and whatnot. You can play it tabletop just fine if you don't mind the crunch (there are ways to simplify combat). The important thing was making it not require the GM to be there and fudge dice rolls or make monsters weaker on the fly if the players are struggling, because computers can't do any of that, and notoriously struggle to handle rule systems designed for people to play among themselves, live around a (virtual) table. It also ended up having its own specific flavor, with rock-paper-scissors tactics and ways to beat the odds. All it lacks for now is a good magic system and a setting. Hope you find it fun and useful anyway.
Tomb of the Gods
The God Urn's immortal guardian CAN be defeated with great effort, but even if you manage that, how will you decide who gets the single wish?
https://austin-ramsay.itch.io/tomb-of-the-gods
A game where you must co-operate to defeat a mind-reading, shape-changing, immortal foe, and then very quickly decide that only one of you gets the prize. If you don't decide fast enough the enemy will revive and you must overcome it once again! Will you be faster deciding who gets the wish the second? Can you survive to argue about it a third time? It would be so much easier to decide if everyone else was dead....
The GUTS+ System
An easy-to-use narrative-based RPG system where custom stats based on your character's personality and background determine the outcomes of actions.
I've been working on GUTS+ ("guts plus") for the past year, and I really like how it's turning out so far. It stands for the 4 base stats plus the custom stats your character has. To determine if something was successful, you roll as many d6's as the stat you are using to roll, so if your Gumption is 3, you roll 3d6. The value of each die is then weighed against a success scale, with 1 being a horrible failure where something goes wrong and 6 being a great success where some extra good thing happens, and the GM determines the outcome!
I also developed a magic system from the ground up that (I think?) is completely unique! It's optional, so you don't have to use it if you use GUTS+, and you can even use your own different magic if you prefer, but I think it's pretty interesting and fun!
All the rules are freely available and do a much better job of explaining than I'm doing here, so go check them out! They're not a very long read at all. :) If you want to see a GUTS+ campaign in action, I have one that I'm running that you can read along with if you want here: https://www.rolegate.com/ref/Alamantus/mother-earth-guts
Deeds, not Words
A GM-less game about civil rights activism and the English suffragettes
http://hardcorenarrativist.org/deedsnotwords/
This is a very simple, narrative game for 2-3h one shots, for three players. It focus on the suffragettes--the radical, violent English group that fought for women's suffrage. They fought the police with jiu-jitsu and clubs, burned buildings, were beaten up and arrested, set bombs, destroyed public property, outsmarted the police using diversions and decoys, gave speeches, and more to achieve their goals.
This game celebrates their work and allows you to play out the lives and struggles of three suffragettes. It's very easy to play regardless of your knowledge of the history of the group (the resulting story doesn't have to be historical, either!). The chapters in the story will be a mix of slice-of-life scenes about their daily struggles, and action scenes about their clashes with the police, anti-suffrage activists, politicians, journalists, and anyone else who opposed the movement.
Under Heaven, Underworld
Passion, vendetta, and justice; a wuxia game set in the modern day, with the world outside your window.
https://hungryghostgames.itch.io/underheavenunderworld
Hi, yes, this is my baby, a result of about ten years of on-and-off work and orphaned projects. Player characters portray martial arts experts of incredible fighting and aesthetic prowess, and they wander the seedy underworlds of places that the players draw from their memories, feuding with other martial artists, protecting the weak, and speaking for the voiceless. Players determine their characters' emotional states to roll and produce narrative currency, which is spent to perform actions in a stressful situation. Group combat is your typical 'roll against each other' fare, but one-on-one combat involves a 'Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock' set-up that I hope has weight and plays out fast.
Now available for playtesting.
Grey Cells
A detective fiction game about combining clues and solving mysteries.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/greycells/grey-cells-rpg
Grey Cells focuses not only on giving players the tools to discover and piece together evidence, but also helps the GM prepare, organise and run mystery adventures. It covers various different genres (Cozy, Great Detective, Hard Boiled, Police Procedural and Thriller) with support for Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Lovecraftian mysteries in development.
Sand Dogs
Role-play in a Heavy Metal-esque desert reminiscent of Indiana Jones crossed with Roadside Picninc and server up by Moebius.
https://vsca.itch.io/sand-dogs
It’s hot, it’s dirty, and there’s dust on the horizon that probably means someone else found out about this Tomb before you. You’ll get there first -- your armoured car is fast, rigged for the hard-packed sand -- but they are coming with more people and...is that a biplane?
No matter; if worst comes to worst you have a way out. The hairy spindle you found at the last tomb has a useful side effect: it shifts you sideways through space to somewhere...else. But where?
It has to be pretty bad to want to find out.
Sand Dogs is a fast-playing campaign RPG that provides simple but durable rules to play indefinitely in a psychedelic dieselpunk fantasy that links to all the other planes in the Soft Horizon. Obstacles to online play have been removed, making this a go-to choice for playing with friends anywhere on the ‘net.
Hey folks! Just wanted to share our first Itch offering:
It's a simple generic RPG framework we wrote to quickly pick up and run any genre/setting we wanted to on the fly. Has a healthy mix of traditional and modern gaming to it. The core mechanic is a simple 1d10+ Proficiency vs 10+. The part that seems to resonate with readers is how we approached our Tags (think feats, advantages, perks etc) -- Instead of listing a bunch we just created three types: a Function (establishes a fact, like Wings let you fly), an Edge (grants you an "advantage" roll twice type thing) or a Boost (+1 to a specific action.) What's fun is mechanically speaking we treat Equipment as tags that can be exchanged, lost or stolen.
We've used it for so many settings -- (Totally Not) Star Wars, cyberpunk, post-apocalypse, pulp heroes and, of course, dungeon crawling.
A roleplaying game about a team of scavengers enduring a demon apocalypse.
In Spirit Fall, you live in a safezone in New York City, ten years after a demon apocalypse. It's the one place where the sun shines through the ash cloud and you can breathe clean air. Life in the safezone is bad, but out there is worse. The people that hold the constant threats at bay are shattering. Someone has to do it. That someone is you. But you're not alone.
We play the game to watch the team struggle with demons, tension, and time. To see them overcome their trauma and fight to protect their safezone. To watch them grapple with crime, oppression, threats, and wrath. To see their spirit rise and watch their spirit fall.
CHORELOCK
A game about getting demons to do your chores.
https://marns.itch.io/chorelock
Chorelock can technically be a play-by-post, or played over a voice chat client, but it's ideally an in-person game that you play with the other person sitting in front of you. It's a two player game where one person plays as a warlock, and the other plays as demons they're summoning to try and bargain with to do their chores. Made for the Transferable Class Skills Jam!
The poison of suspicion
A game about life and forgiveness for 2 players (poisoner and victim).
http://hardcorenarrativist.org/items/poison-suspicion
This is a semi-competitive game for two players. One of them plays someone who is poisoned and is probably going to die. The other plays the person who poisoned them. The game is a series of alternating scenes: the victim's player creates vignettes showing why their life was worth living (to earn hope points), while the poisoner's player creates situations showing the bad sides of the victim and why it was just to kill them (to earn righteousness points). At the end of the game it will be revealed whether the victim will survive, and whether the poisoner will find forgiveness (either in themselves, or in the victim). The character sheet comes with prompts to help inspire the players.
Facing the Titan, a GM-less game about heroes facing... well... a Titan!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gulix/facing-the-titan
and also https://gulix.itch.io/facing-the-titan
In this GM-less game, you will protray heroes whose fate is to defeat a Titan. A gigantic being the wanders their world for ages. The game will end with the clash between the Company and the Titan, but it focuses on who are the Companions, who is the Titan and what brings the Companions here. What is their journey?
It's a highly narrative game, based on the mechanisms of Swords Without Master by Epidiah Ravachol. It's designed to offer 2-3 hours one-shot sessions, each with its own setting, characters and epilogue.
The game is replayable as each Titan brings a different tone to the game, a different setting. There is currently 12 Titans in the game.
Incubus, A Secret Journal Game: By the Obituary Society. The first of a series of adult, one-player, print-and-play TRPG experiences that leave you with a one-of-a-kind personal artifact as you spend two weeks engaged with your lusts, your fears, and your otherworldly seducer.
Metropole Luxury Coffin
Metropole Luxury Coffin: Build businesses, pull scams, do anything for money to escape this capsule hotel. Free-to-play, winner of the 2010 Cyberpunk Revival Contest!
Metropole Luxury Coffin 2.0: (by Mad Unkie Games, coming to Kickstarter soon) Try to make enough money to stay one step ahead of your creditors while living in a capsule hotel!
An anything-goes, JRPG style role playing world in a (mostly) medieval-ish high-fantasy setting.
It is a straight up fantasy world with deep lore, mysterious places and a lot of challenging creatures.
Quite similar to an mmo world, fights between adventurer and monster is very common and almost trivial here, at least for the more experienced ones.
Quickly breeding populations have to be kept at bay, which some people make a living of. Thus, this game is very combat oriented.
It's very easy to learn and understand - BUT challenging to master. If you plan ahead regarding skills and classes, your character can raise to anime- hero power levels pretty quick.
" Let's Naruto-run into battlefield and deal over 9000 damage! "
https://ataraxiaonline.de.tl/ ( rule book - almost complete : p )
https://discord.gg/8Pex4D ( our discord, where we play online whenever we want! (GM usually only on sunday).
https://refsheet.net/ ( your character goes here - and stats should be visible to anyone )
Hey folks, I finally had time to stop by, so I figured I'd tell about the games I made so far ^^
The reason this links are to a different account is because I made this games with my boyfriend and that account is for our "game studio".
A GM-less game, that can be played solo or with friends, about saving the world after being given powers by a fairy.
https://naive-star.itch.io/rise-up-save-the-world
A map-making narrative game that you play as an imortal being returning home. Can be played solo or with friends.
https://naive-star.itch.io/saudade
A game about surviving and staying sane in a hostile environment based off of a Brazilian urban legend.
The Angelical Life, a two-player game of cats, horror, and existential dread, is now live! It uses the brand new GRACE Engine, which models the elegance of dance into high stakes competitions.
https://goat-song-publishing.itch.io/angelical-life
Black Code - A Transhuman Cyberpunk RPG.
Black Code is a transhuman cyberpunk RPG set in a future where humanity and technology are intermingled so closely we don’t know where we are going next, vast corporate powers manipulate that technology for their own ends, and something dark is lurking in the sewers and alleys waiting...
This game is a toolkit for role playing in the dark future. As a player we give you a whole bunch of options to create whatever character you like, with a light, fast system that’s got just enough “crunch” to make your decisions matter. As a GM the rich background is a buffet - if you don’t want to take in the whole transhuman thing you can just pick and chose the bits you do like, or hack in your own.
The Haul is my collection of game design projects, currently including 7 original games, 4 settings for other games, and 2 supplements for other games. The original games are definitely the big-ticket item, though, so I figure that here is the most appropriate place for sharing it. More information about each individual game can be found on the project page.
https://dealerumbra.itch.io/the-umbra-haul
I've launched my urban supernatural heist RPG which like other Beta Maxx games leans into the Movie Trope space and takes reference from decades of heist films, but puts a spin on top of them all. You can see some of the influences on the launch release, or if you get in and check the Appendix M1 and Appendix M2 (no there are no Appendices A to L ;) )
https://halfling-caravan-games.itch.io/beta-maxx-theft/devlog/168242/launched
The Knife is my take on steampunk mixed with fantasy, set in a decaying royal city at the edges of the desert and the sea. The city's on the verge of being colonized by an aggressive foreign empire, and the main characters are "sharps," natives of the city that they call The Knife. Mechanics are inspired mainly by Tunnel Goons, so indirectly harkening back to Fighting Fantasy.
The Duel
https://joel-lafferty-hughes.itch.io/the-duel
A combat system that aims to allow players a more engaging and dynamic way to tell the narratives of martial combat encounters. The system allows for any weaponry players may like to use, in any setting, and has game modes for one, two or groups of players.
There are also guidelines for adapting the system for use in an outside RPG campaign setting to add a more grounded feel to combat.
Here's something quick I came up with today, though this is more of a supplement than a full system but nothing's stopping you:
The basic story is I had a dream about teaching 4-6 year old kids how to play TRPG's but the problem was I only had a coin. In real life I work with kids, so this scenario isn't all that unlikely actually. Anyway, I came up with this system and when I woke up, I thought it was actually a good idea with a few tweaks added.
As a result The 50/50 System was born! I've added a bit more complexity/nuance to it than in my dream, but I want to stress that it isn't a robust system, which is why I call it a "supplemental system". However, it comes with some nice bonuses:
I'm sure there are others but that's what came to mind when I thought about it. The document has been updated with typo corrections and one rule clarification (which was my fault due to a typo), but I more-or-less made this after waking up today. Other folks seem really pleased with it, which surprised me, and I thought y'all might too.
Enjoy, and happy gaming! :D
https://rolistespod.itch.io/paris-gondo-text-only
"The play-based GonParis Method is a simple, smart, and effective way to banish encumbrance forever. Adopt this dungeoneering strategy, and you’ll never be overloaded again."
This game is a tongue-in-cheek tribute to Marie Kondo, encumbrance rules and other tropes found in beloved dungeon-crawling games.
It is a GM-less storytelling game for 3 to 6 players, designed to be played in a few hours with polyhedral dice and no preparation.
Players in this game embody Adventurers who, as a group called a Party, have reached the last level of a Dungeon and defeated the Boss who presided over it. Play starts as Adventurers discover Loot you create. The objects you decide your Adventurer carries home makes up what you pack as their Final Inventory.
If Adventurers hold on to possessions that spark joy, they might feel invigorated and satisfied for the rest of their existence, or at least until their next adventure. But letting go of less emotionally charged but useful Belongings might prove to be a deadly mistake for the Party on their Journey Home.
Also, it is the first game that I designed and published ever.
:D
Watchmaker's Apprentice: A game about reflecting on life choices while building a watch.
The Final Cathedral at the End of the World is basically a storygame dungeoncrawl, where you play as the dungeon.
Games with a Disney World Design
Here is a nice design of games with Disney heroes and world - https://www.films-disney.fr/jeux-casino-inspires-univers-disney/
Oh. I just released THE MENDING CIRCLE, a tender and wholesome TTRPG about healing. You come together as a coven of three witches sent to help. You are there for those that have no one by their side. You can be a helping hand, that one lucky break they need to get back on their feet.
What I really love about The Mending Circle is that it is a game about hope and healing, but not one that is afraid to show its teeth. It's about the authentic and difficult journey that healing demands.
— Avery Alder (Buried without Ceremony)
You can grab it here:
'A hundred years' is a GMless TTRPG game I designed for worldbuilding with my players. It follows the relationships of a group of characters over several generations, building up a family tree and following how the world changes around them.
It is also pretty much setting/genre agnostic :)
https://megasomamars.itch.io/paratype
Paratype is a game about surviving a post-apocalyptic world by fighting giant bugs. The system is semi-crunchy with mutant bug powers & can run in long or short term campaigns! Currently working on creating a proper pre-made module for in book :>
Modern Mythology- A superpunk game combing the near future and superheroes.
https://relentlessfilm.itch.io/modern-mythology-quickstart
https://infantofatocha.itch.io/chronomutants
Do y'all like player shenanigans? do you also think that "it's so crazy it just might work" is a mechanically underserved part of tabletop gaming? Do you like the flavor of Gamma World but don't care too much for the cumbersome mechanics? Do you like the idea of nobody waiting for a players turn to do something? Do you believe that Sasquatch should be a player class? If you are weird like me, I got your back.
Check it out please, give feedback please. You think it stinks? tell me why. You see an obvious thing that I missed because I spent too much time starring at the Docs? Tell me. I need all the help I can get.
Very excited to announce the release of Brightknife, a push-your-luck d6 TTRPG. 70 pages of indie OSR-style goodness with pill bug goblins, quick character creation, lovely art, and a system that encourages roleplaying and clever problem solving.
Thanks for taking a look! https://daggerpress.itch.io/brightknife
Rapture Roleplay System ( Big Red Ugly Edition) offers players a compromise between rules-light, exciting action and conceptually crunchier story-centric games, with deeper characters without resorting to hundreds of pages of rules, overly complex mechanics, and dozen-page character sheets. While this game does offer a system for tabletop roleplaying, Rapture also offers a number of specific gameplay opportunities: Sandbox philosophies, balanced roleplaying opportunities, and collaboration between players and their referee.
Pre-Order Here: https://free-radicals-press.itch.io/rapture-big-red
Core rules: https://jocher-symbolic-systems.itch.io/oceania-2084
Solo expansion: https://jocher-symbolic-systems.itch.io/oceania-2084-solo-rules
What is Oceania 2084?
In gamer-lingo, the game is an asymmetric, adversarial storytelling game with a heavy focus on social gameplay and stealth. The game is designed for 3-8 players. It is a game about resistance despite unimaginably bad odds and finding small glimmers of hope even when things seem impossibly bleak.
The Setting
The game is heavily inspired by the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1949) by George Orwell, which is a dystopian illustration of the life of Winston Smith under totalitarian bureaucracy and a world that does not allow for individualism. It also takes some inspiration from "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Instead of trying to make a game that is an imitation of Orwell's vision the game takes place in The City which is left unnamed and largely undefined. The City will be yours to create, collectively imagine, and explore. What is defined are what types of areas exist in all versions of The City, and a way to determine the personality of the city. Directly inspired by Orwell are the existing state structures: the Ministries, Big Brother, and the Party. These will play a big part in all sessions of the game as they are integral parts of the rules for the Big Brother player.
Mechanics and systems
An unconventional take on collaborative storytelling. The game is an asymmetrical adversarial game, with player characters on one side of the conflict and one player taking the role of "Big Brother" effectively being the antagonist of the game. The actions of one side enable actions from the other side, according to a rule-based point system. There is no traditional conflict resolution system, where you roll a die to achieve something. Instead, the game is balanced through a system of risk and reward and strategic usage of resources. This doesn't mean that you will not be rolling dice, there are a lot of situations and rules that use and rely on die rolling.
The game is inspired by rogue-likes, Red Carnations on a black grave, Lasers & Feelings, Vampire the Masquerade, PbtA, A Thousand Year Old Vampire, and Paranoia among other things.