Hello, it's [insert idea] again. Coming back to all you wondrous people with some amazing news. After a few (long) months of deliberation and delegation, coupled with a new discord channel where we rigorously test things with our members, we've (Spade King and co) have finalized our latest update.

This update comes with a plethora of new items. One being designed formats for some various guides so you don't have to look at the ugly black and white anymore. Thank you, Lunox.

The others being things such as QOL and new features. Namely, the TITAN System Update. Ever wanted to be the vessel of a powerful deity, so much so that your very existence could be treated as an instantiation of their essence on the material plane? Well now, you could. (Check DarkReach supplements 2.0).

We've added quirks which are essentially tiny extra powers/passives that help fine tune a build. One such quirk is the stealth quirk, which at its "first sub quirk level" erases noise you make passively. There are 3 levels to a quirk, sub quirk 1-3. Each having a different advantage.

We've added Patrons which are deities you can serve and gain power from via the faith quirk. Cleric style. (Also in supplements 2.0)

And many, many more things! So head on down to this itch link and give it a read...what? You won't? You don't really have a choice, pal.

https://thespadeking.itch.io/darkreach-chronicles-the-first-edition/devlog/1697080/update-21

A quick note before I get started, this text is not exactly the most well formatted to act as game rules, I was kind more going for a post just explaining the game or acting like a quick start at first, then I realized I really had no idea how to do that for a solo game in its early, messy stages like this. I mean, I know OF ways I could make it better to read, but actually writing it that way just wasn't flowing.

I do reaaaaaaally want people to give it a shot if they have time though, since I'm hoping a solo game will be easier for people to mess around with, so if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them. I'd even make a video walking through the game or get in a call with someone to talk about it if that make things better! Anyway here's stuff about the game for real:

I finished the first version of my new solo romance dungeon crawler, “Love in a Place Like This?”!

It’s still in the very early stages, but I really like the direction its headed and how portable it can be! To play, all you need is to prepare notebook or folded stack of papers and grab a pencil! No dice are necessary due to a fairly unique resolution mechanic. 

It’s based on he/she loves me, he/she loves me not (the simple game where you take a flower and alternate the two phrases in the games name as you rip of petals, the last one you rip off telling you the result). 

The early pages in the journal feature a prompt with options telling you to a specific number of petals, the latter pages are partially cut into strips to blindly tear or fold over by touch, representing the petals. If you end on they love me the relationship improves, and if you end on they love me not it worsens.

Whether a number is even or odd can tell you what the result will be if you think about it, but the option to tailor your response to what will improve a relationship is an important part of romance games to me! 

Plus with randomly ordered prompts, some having both options be even or both odd, or the one you want costing more petals, and pre-folded page breaks or pages ends stopping petal pulls early, making them a true 50/50, things aren’t always predictable.

Theres some more nuance to it, but we’ll get into it later.

From here on I’m gonna focus on what you need to do to play.

First, you must prepare the notebook.

1.     Create 2 characters and a scenario.

First create two characters and the scenario they are in.

I made a bold, inexperienced cadet fresh out of the academy in some sort of military as my player character, and their experienced but uptight and slightly snarky superior officer as their love interest.

You can consider yourself the narrator, or just journal two characters without “you” really having a role, instead of writing from the perspective of one of the characters, but having a “player character” and “love interest” is all I’ve tested for.

For the scenario: they were on a mission to scout an abandoned space station when the ship they were crew of suddenly left without them. Because of this prompts I wrote are designed around the idea of scifi exploration so if you come up with your own scenario it should fit with that, and it should be an isolated environment with escape and survival being uncertain, but the rest is up to you. You could have the two characters wake up from cryostasis to find everyone else on the ship dead, or the ship they came in on destroyed, the stars are the limit!

1.     2 create the mood trackers.

Draw five expressions on the front page of the notebook/papers, from angry to blushing/in love. Add two dots next the each face. If you want, add a phrase or two based on how you think the love interestwould react to situations and choices based on the relationship/mood level.

Circle the lower dot next to whichever face represents their relationship starting out. I selected the second lowest face.

Also write down whatever version of the phrase they love me, they love me not, applies to your characters so you can mark which phrase to start with next. 

(Something like this!)

2.     3. Create or select promts

I’ll go into detail on how to create prompts, generally with different options and corresponding petal amounts, in another version. For now use the provided prompts. You can decide to use all 15, or only 10 or 5 and pick the ones you like.

Write the ones you select into the next pages of the journal. You can find the example prompts after this section. (You do not have to write the prompts down if you want to use this document as a reference, it is just for the sake of being able to play with the notebook alone).

3.     Number pages with prompts

Decide how many prompts you want to use, 5-15, and write each number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for example sown somewhere.

Next write x down on whatever page you intend to start journaling, the next one after the prompts have been transcribed. This is where you will write the inro.

Turn the page or the next page so that you can no longer see the x (or number) you wrote down, then randomly write one of the numbers from your list and cross it of on the list.

Repeat this till all of the numbers have been used, then randomly number the prompts you wrote down or use the order they are in already as numbers when journaling.

(Here the number four is visible on the left page, but there is none visible on the right, if you turn the right page you will se another random number, not 5)

4.     Transcribe banes and boons.

Sometimes a prompt will provide an additional benefit or consequence for a they love me or they love me not result. These are called banes and boons. 

If using the in the next section, write them in the journal on the last page. (again, this step is unnecessary if you plan to use this document as a reference while journaling. 

5.     Create petals. 

Starting with the second to last page of the journal, make cuts along the right edge of the page so that foldable paper strips appear, they can be short cuts, its fine if the majority of the page is still connected. 

Don’t track how many cuts you are making, but about ten provides a good set, there will hopefully be pages with an even number of cuts as well as odd but not a fully equal amount of each, leave it up to fate as much as you can.

Finally, at a few pages randomly rip out or pre fold over a petal, making a page break before the page ends.

(It should look something like this, in this cases pages with pre-folded petals are next to each other, try to avoid doing that all the time. On the right page you can see a particularly thick petal near the end, varying size can make where the page ends a biiiiiit harder to tell)

I’m not totally sure how many pages should be cut per number of prompt, but I did 15 prompts and cut 6, which was a bit generous. Try 5 for 15, 3 for 10, 2 for 5 maybe. Whether you select prompts that have a benefit for hitting a page end effects things as well.

With that you have fully prepared the journal and can begin play, or wait and begin at a later time. The next section will cover actually playing the game, first… 

Here are the example prompts and boons.

Prompts: prompts feature choices, each with a number of petals to pull. Even ones keep the mood going, generally resulting in whatever result the last one did, positive or negative, while odd ones switch up the vibe and often yield the opposite. The higher the number, the more risky or draining in term of resources, mental and physical state, or just luck the choice will be. Based on the personality of the love interest, you may want to know what number, odd or even, risky or safe, from 1-6 might appeal to them. More on that later.

Sometimes prompts will have special rewards or conditions, especially if you hit a page break. In general though, you move the mood tracker one up or down one circle if you do not hit a page break, and two circles, thus a full face, if you do. More on that later.

List:

A room that begins to rapidly flood as it is crossed.

Try to float cross it before it floods completely 5 petals. If page break hit they love you not does not decrease relationship.

Find a safe place like a raised platform or air pocket in a full flood to wait it out, huddled together for warmth 4 petals. If page break hit relationship goes up a single dot in addition to any other change

Encounter a lone, weak creature or robot.

Move past it, sneaking by or killing it potentially 2 petals.

Tame, 5 petals. If you hit a page break, it is tamed successfully on they love me, gain a boon, taming fails and it is hostile on they love me not, gain a bane. If you do not hit a page break you can decide taming success or base it on the result as you wish, it has no mechanical effect. 

Violent monsters/robots appear… maybe they haven’t spotted you yet.

Try to find a way through or around them peacefully/stealthily 3 petals.

Fight for your life 6 petals.

Observatory, a room with telescopes or displays of nearby or distant expanses of space.

Move on 0 petals. Nothing occurs

Spend time observing or investigating 3 petals. If you hit a page break, you gain knowledge that brings hope or despair, enlightenment or insanity, bane or boon in line with result.

Nightmare, the two rest, and the player character has a deeply troubled sleep.

Accept it all, 0 petals but decrease the relationship by a single dot.

Search for a deeper understanding of yourself, pull petals till you hit a full stop and gain a bain if they love you not, results are otherwise normal for a full stop. 

Chasm, the two must perform a space walk to reach the rest of the facility.

The two do separate walks 5 petals. If you hit a page break, and they love you not, no change in relationship but pull petals till the next full stop, spending a page. If they love you not again, the love interest is lost in space. They can communicate through coms for the rest of the journal. If the relationship is full and you complete all prompts, there may be a way to save them… up to you.

Walk together, tethered to each other 3 petals. If encounter a full stop, and they love you not, there is no change in relationship but pull petals till the next full stop spending a page, if they loves me not again you are both lost in space. See ending, all petals used.

Garden

Enjoy and move on, 0 petals. The relationship goes up one circle.

Spend time foraging, pull petals till a page break. If he loves me gain a boon as well as usual result, if they love you not, the relationship does not suffer from it.

Escape pod room, the pods are functional, but there is no navigation system to aid their path, they will simply travel in a straight line in space till they run out of food.

Move on, pull two petals, mood soured a little.

Use them, all the remaining petals in the journal. Each time you reach a page break, record the result and continue. If two thirds are they love me, you both reach safety or are discovered before life support runs out, otherwise you both meet your end. Can pick this option after this room has been encountered, but if there are not at least 3 page breaks when it is used, it auto fails, your luck has already been spent.

Irreparably injured crew found in damaged sleep pods

Try and save them 6 petals. If page break hit boon or bane accordingly, some may be mindlessly violent or zombies from the experience and attack, no one can be saved for long (it is always just you and your love interest against the world) but you may be able to give some of them closure or learn something valuable.

Move on, or shut of life support and let them end, 1 petal pulled.

A… dragon!? How?

RUN! 2 petals. If page break hit, 2 boons from besting the dragon if you get they love you, for they love you not there is no change in relationship but pull petals until the next full stop. 

If they love you this time you escape gaining nothing but your lives, if they love you not again, see end all petals spent.

Genetic engineering apparatus.

Run last programmed experiment 5 petals. What monstrosity or miracle is created? What was this lab, maybe even this station, for? Boon or bane according to result.

Try to program a new experiment 3 petals. On they love you, you may choose to do the Encounter a lone/weak creature prompt as well, even if you have done it before.

Move on 0 petals. Nothing happens, after a look around the area you leave it, learning and gaining little.

Robot tea party, you encounter a group of robots having a tea party, they invite you to join.

Join 3 petals. Decide whether it goes well or poorly, the petals tell you how that impacts the relationship.

Decline 2 petals. If this results in they love you not, even due to a full stop, a fight breaks out, pull two additional petals after the result.

Creatures resembling whales pass by through space, creating a beautiful song where there should be no sound.

Stay a while and listen 0 petals. Relationship improves one dot.

Hunt them for their power, perhaps out of foreknowledge of their usefulness or legends, or out of fear or desperation to use anything you can to save yourselves, 5 petals. Whether you get they love you or they love you not, gain a boon, any one like even ones that you normally couldn’t.

Message in a bottle, drifting through space a glass jar with a paper in it.

Move on, 0 petals, do not decide what is in the bottle, you will never know.

Try to obtain and open it, perhaps facing danger in the process or from what might be inside, 5 petals. Decide/discover what is in the bottle, perhaps based on the result from the petals.

Dopplegangers, you encounter two figures, indistinguishable from you and your partner, they are not friendly. This prompt is a mess, but was quite fun to use.

Face yourself, 4 petals. By mind, tongue, or arms you prevail. A result of they love you functions as normal. On they love you not however, you lose track of what happens to your partner. On a result of tye love you not, circle the current mood before you decrease it. Continue play as normal. If you would get a bain, instead it is revealed that your partner was replaced! Reset mood to where it was circled and lose a page (of petals) dealing with the doppleganger/finding your partner. If you would get a boon first, instead you find proof your partner is the real one, move relationship up a full level. If you encounter neither, and reach the end of the game with full romance, the doppleganger is revealed, reset the mood to where it was circled and either reunite with your partner… or decide to escape with the doppleganger, having learned to rely on them and giving your relationship with it a chance. If you reach the end without full romance… you may never know the truth… or perhaps your character learns in the future far, far too late to stop what is coming.

Face your partner, 4 petals. Gain two bains on he loves you not. (Yeah… figured the other one was so complicated I wouldn’t work to hard on this one, it sort of incentives risking the doppleganger though. That’s neat).

Boons and banes: some prompts provide additional benefits and consequences, most you can only select once, but there is one of each that can be selected as often as you get a goon or gain, but only once you’ve used all other options. You can also get a boon by increasing your relationship when it is maxed or decreasing it when it is at minimum. 

List Boons:

Skip a prompt, repeatable, can only select if all other boons are gone.

Advance the relationship two dots.

Every time relationship increases by two dots, increase it by an additional dot.

Your next choice on a prompt takes 2 less petals.

Switch loves me/loves me not tracker once.;

List Banes:

You must rip all the petals on a page, no relationship change, repeatable, do not select unless all other banes are gone. 

Lower relationship by two dots.

Every time the relationship decreases by two dots, decrease it by an additional dot

Rip three petals.

You must tear double the petals on your next choice

You are ready to begin play

1.     Intro

On the page marked x, Journal whatever you like about, your characters, how the adventure starts for your characters, the gist of their relationship, how they arrive in the “dungeon” they must try to explore or escape and what it first appears like.

Its not a bad idea to have a mystery in mind, something you’ll decide the truth of based on better prompts. In the intro my characters arrived on the station, had a little back and forth, and then were shocked to see their ship leave without them. Neither trying to make contact or wait worked so they were forced to explore the station for something to help them. I did not know why the ship left starting out just like the characters, but decided the answer based on prompts that resonated. 

2.     Find out what the first prompt is and begin journaling. 

Turn to the first numbered page. Check back to the prompt page and find the one that corresponds. Make your choice. You can base it off of what seems beneficial, factors such as petal cost or the result its likely to have based on being odd or even, or just run with what you think your character(s) would do.

Begin journaling, writing what the room looks like, your characters reactions, and how the decision on how to proceed occurs. It might be a unanimous decision, one reached after an argument, or one character rushing forward despite the others objection. Keep their current relationship level and personalities in mind.

3.     Pull the petals (you can do this before journaling at all if that helps you think of an entry better).

If the choice you made has you pull more than zero petals, reach a hand to the back of the journal, feel the last page and fold over or rip of a petal (strip of paper), then say or think they love me or they love me not depending on what you think is appropriate for them. 

If you have not pulled the number of petals you need to, pull another with the opposite phrase that you said last time. 

Continue until you have pulled the required number of petals, if you end with the phrase they love me, draw a circle around the next highest dot on the mood tracker, if you end on they love me not circle down one. Erase the the original circle, leaving only the new one. On the same page as the mood tracker the phrases they love me they love me not should be present. Circle the opposite one to what you ended on, you will start with that phrase the next time you pull petals.

If you run out of petals to pull in the process of this, either reaching the end of a page, or a pre-folded petal, end the pulling early, on the last phrase you used. In this case, you will move the relationship tracker up or down two dots instead of one.

You can choose to tear more petals than the prompt requires as long as you do it in sets of two to keep the even/odd value. This gives you a chance to get different result than you normally would for a choice and can impact some prompts more than others.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

That’s generally how it goes but heres some things to note. You may remove petals while looking at them if you prefer, that’s how the petal game goes after all, and seeing the break coming up, having to react to the knowledge, on the temptation to “cheat” by say folding two petals for a phrase instead of one, can be part of the fun, it just ruins the surprise a bit. 

Feeling for petals alone can be pretty tough sometimes too, as the next pages can be felt behind the folded petals of the one you are on making things tough. Maybe try alternated cut pages and full blank pages when preparing the journal (a waste of space but oh well), or tear chunks off of full pages instead of folding precut strips, a page break happening when the right edge is completely gone. Your subconscious can influence the results that way too.

Prompts may have additional effects such as boons or banes, especially if you reach a page break, something you can choose to do by pulling extra petals if you do so by 2, so read each one carefully. Some can even end the game early.

Finally, remember how you can give a number from 1-6 for what kind of prompt the love interest might like? If you select a prompt that matches that number, you can change the result to they love me even if it shouldn’t be. This sets the starting phrase to they love me not for the next prompt as usual. I forgot to test this rule when playing so it might not work so well.

4.     Journal the result of the choice.

Now that you know the effect the choice will have on the relationship, you can continue journaling. The stage is already set, you’ve described the problem, and how your characters are choosing to react to it, now its just a matter of what happens when they do.

In some cases, particularly where boons and banes are involved, the petals may tell you how well the action goes as well as the emotional impact, most of the time you can decide for yourself. An action might work, but still drive a wedge between the partners, or fail but bring them closer together, even when one of the characters didn’t support the action in the first place.

Keep the characters, the before and after state of their relationship, the petal number representing risk or resource costs, and just what you think would be a cool thing to happen based on the prompt in mind when journaling. 

In testing I did silly things like make the message in a bottle just an ad for a casino, an “out of the box”, marketing attempt, or more serious things like tie the genetic experiment room to the dopple-gangers, and them to the reason the ship left without the characters, for me at least things seemed to come together quickly!

With two pages per prompt, you might have more space than you need, you can write two numbers on pages one on bottom one on top, folding over the top corner of the right side page to see a previously hidden number and do 1 prompt per page without spoiling numbers, or use the extra space for doodles representing what happened!

5.     Next prompt, continue

Repeat steps 2-4 on the next numbered page using the marked phrase as your starting point, continue until you run out of prompts or petals.

6.     Ending the game.

The game ends if a prompt says it does, you run out of petals, or arrive at the last prompt and resolve it. 

If you reach the last prompt, ignore the number of petals and tear until the next full stop, or use all that remain in the journal without stopping. The prompt, including its effect on the relationship, resolves as normal, making the state the relationship ends in one last 50/50. If you use a boon to skip the last prompt, this final 50/50 does not take place. 

7.     Resolve ending.

If you ran out of petals, the party of two fails to escape the dungeon before disaster strikes, running out of food, air, or being critically harmed by a threat from the prompt you ran out of petals on. Write a final journal entry to describe their last moments or how everything ends somehow, take the relationship level into account. Do they die in each others arms? Go their separate ways and die alone? Strike each other down in a rage?

If the relationship is at full when you run out of petals, a special option exists. One of the character can sacrifice themselves to allow the other to escape. How this plays out in the story is up to you, but to give an example given the provided prompts, the characters could return to the escape pod room with a promise to take their chances together. Instead one stays behind in the control room, having figured out to access the stations computers over the journey, and locks the other in an escape pod as they launch it and guide it to safety from the station.

If you reach the last prompt and resolve it, the players find a way to escape, potentially related to the prompts featured throughout the journey. Once they are free from the station it has a huge impact on the relationship, represented by the last 50/50 it may bring them closer together once they can have safety and space from the other, or drive them apart.

Write an epilogue for them based on their relationship level, if it is at its highest they might immediately start a committed relationship for real, second highest, slowly find true love between each other over time, middle neither avoid nor seek each other out while the ghost of what could have been hangs over every awkward meeting, second lowest resolve never to meet the other unless forced, lowest, part sworn enemies.

For the lowest relationship rating, you may be asking about the possibility of enemies to lovers. While still in the dungeon at the lowest rating, you may sacrifice a page to see if love can grow out of hate. If they love you not the highest rating you can access from then on is ambivalence. If they love you, you can treat the lowest rating as similar to the highest for prompt and ending results, if a bit more fiery and combative. The second lowest rating still works as normal though, making moving in and out of love lightning fast. Of course you could instead recontextualize the mood tracker from the get go, starting at hate and making each level just an ever more magnetic version of it.

For my run, the love interest was replaced with a doppelganger, but that left the relationship frozen at full, while the doppelganger appeared to lower it. They were soon revealed, and the characters reunited, they discovered the doppelgangers had been created in experiments in the genetic experiment room, and eventually figured out that the captain had been replaced by a doppelganger, getting through to their ship with a stronger communication array on the station and explaining the imposter situation, allowing the ship to return for their rescue.

Cut to an epilogue of them vacationing on the casino planet they found an ad for, the uptight love interest in a hawain shirt sipping a drink, they realize they may have left their pet slime back on the station (cause I forgot about it completely during later prompts, oops), and the love interest smirked and suggested they return to find it, much more cavalier than they had been previously.

Starving Folly is a Horror TTRPG inspired by Fear and Hunger that can be used to run any type of horror ranging from Dark-Fantasy to Sci-fi horror. The game is rules-light and easy to get into while still having plenty of customization for building characters.

• Resolution mechanic. This game uses ad10 + Modifiers against a Difficulty Class system to determine outcomes of characters actions.
• Scars. This game has a system to temporarily or permanently debilitate a character through Scars and even losing bodyparts.
• Hunger and Sanity Tokens. This game has a system of stamina and sanity tokens that are used to activate special abilities but give debuffs if a character reaches 0 tokens.
• No Classes. This game doesn't have classes, instead it uses a series of Perks the characters can have to give them special abilities.
• Short Stories. While the game can be used to run long campaigns it works better when running one-shots and shorts campaigns.

This is my first TTRPG so i hope you all enjoy it.

https://thecappy01.itch.io/starving-folly

I created this spell for a subclass (Sanguine Mother patron) of the Occultist, the newest class of my TTRPG. I will not include all the text, just the general idea.

It deals 1d6 + Awareness Modifier (damage die increases later) damage to a target. As a secondary action, you can form a blade from the blood coming from the targets wounds. This blade causes the initially rolled damage every single time. Of course, you have to keep spending some mana to maintain the blade, but this is the base idea. What do you think?

I just launched my new horror ttrpg, The Decay: Survival Horror Roleplaying on Kickstarter. It's a rules lite game with tense mechanics that grind your character down as they struggle against the weird horror scenarios they find themselves in. Every roll you make, pass or fail, your stats drop down. If you know with Breathless, then The Decay will feel pretty familiar. It's as easy to run as it is to play with no stat blocks to track and the easy to use Decay Level mechanic lets you control the pacing and intensity of the horror as the story escalates.

The decay focuses on weird horror. Not quite cosmic, not quite analog, but sharing elements of both. You won't find any vampires, werewolves, or other classic monsters here. The Horrors are all original entities, cursed objects, and strange phenomenon. On the KS page you'll find a link for the FREE 60 page quickstart, Fresh Decay, as well as an actual play and interviews.

Something I'm really excited about is our stretch goal zine, Mass Grave, that is going to be a collection of Horrors from the likes of Jack Panic of DNGN CLUB, Quinn Murphy, RP Deshaies, and John Harper!

How's it going everybody!?

Last month I made a post about starting a weekly/monthly rpg discussion group. I've observed that trying to make everyone talk about the same game kills other groups, so I opened discussion to whatever rpg related thing(s) everyone had been up to lately!

It went okay on this sub, and pretty good on r/ttrpg, so the post I'm making there might be a bit more active. Still, here's last month's post here. https://www.reddit.com/r/myrpg/comments/1w6or3b/weeklymonthly_open_bookclub_discussion/

I think I'm gonna start making a post the first Friday of every month!

I encourage everyone to check out the activity or even respond to comments on last months post, and say what you've been up to or are excited about in RPGs this month in comments here.

Last time I started things off with a comment that separated what I played, designed, and looked into into separate paragraphs/sections, and some other people used that format as well, but its all up to you!

Feedback on how to do the posts moving forward is welcome as well!

Have fun!

It's October 13th, 1999 and the world has ended.  Someone, no one is sure who, let something into our world.  A kind of infection or corruption that affects both the body and the mind.  Animals, people, even mundane objects... all became twisted and unnatural.  Some speculate it's a kind of demonic possession, others that it's an alien or even transdimensional biological weapon.  In the end, it doesn't matter.  The whole world fell apart, twisted from within.

The survivors cling to their wretched lives in a fallen world, trying to comprehend the horrors and fend them off for just one more day.  The world is in tatters, monsters roam around consuming everything they can, strange occult powers spread among the damned, and even the very air seems tainted.

Perhaps the rapture happened and the survivors are being punished because they were found wanting.  Perhaps this is some kind of strange terrorist attack from another world.  Or maybe it's all nothing more than a cosmic accident, a tragedy of happenstance as something never intended for this world found its way in.

Can you survive and fight off the horrors coming from within and without?

October Twilight is a survival horror/dungeon crawler tabletop roleplaying game for 2 or more players.  One player must take the role of the Game Master.  This game assumes familiarity with other roleplaying games and so much of the basic flow of roleplaying is not explained.

The game is meant to feel like a PS1/PS2 era survival horror game and a post apocalyptic survival game.  Food is scarce, ammunition is scarcer, and everything is trying to kill you.

In the game, your team has a safe house they come back to between excursions.  The safe house lives up to it's name, being safer than exploring the ruins of the fallen world outside your door.  But, you burn resources like food and water at the safe house and have to go out to find more.  You'll never have enough resources to simply hole up and wait out the end of the world.

Touchstones and Inspirations: Resident Evil, Silent Hill, The Walking Dead, Darkest Dungeon, and Evil Dead 2.

October Twilight Oktrollberfest Edition by verasev

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/verasev/october-twilight?ref=user_menu

My Kickstarter for October Twilight.  I hope to get crowdfunding to pay for art for a physical release.

First off, if you've purchased the bundle, and there are games you are interested in you haven't downloaded... DOWNLOAD THEM!

Pretty sure you will lose access to things you haven't downloaded after the bundle ends, PWYW bundles are kind of weird on itch.

Second, here's the bundle in case you haven't had a chance to check it out or want to spread the link around before its too late https://itch.io/b/3605/indie-charity-bundle-for-accessibility-in-ttrpgs-pwyw

Finally... closing out at around 379 purchases (not including freebies I believe) and $2,362 in donations, this project has far exceeded my goals in most ways.

I put a lot of work into putting this project together, and to set my expectations I set two benchmarks for the minimum that would need to happen for me to consider it "worth it".

Either

1 Hitting the 1,000$ donation goal, something I thought would be very achievable and in the end it was, we hit the goal within two weeks. Now we have more than double the goal.

Or

2 More than doubling the downloads of my game This Town Ain't Big Enough (and using that as a benchmark for other creators' getting some at least). My game now has 200 views and 178 downloads (a total based on both files), and and either pdf has more than double downloads than both before the bundle.

As you can see, we hit both fairly easily! The bundle has been decently successful!

But at the same time didn't exactly go well enough to change the status of the bookclub or probably any of the games in the bundle dramatically. I mean if a decent portion of the people that have downloaded our games have/will play and like them sure, but theres no real way to know that.

The more pressing issue for me is that there didn't appear to be a lot of discussion of the bundle, or games in it. Thats been a problem for the sub since the beginning, and seems to carry across scheduled RPG discussion groups even in vastly bigger communities. I gave prompting more general discussion a shot here and r/TTRPG you can check out the post here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TTRPG/comments/1w6pkox/is_anyone_interested_in_a_regular_discussion_of/

Not a ton of commenter to commenter interaction, but it did something, and I'm gonna try again. Linking back to the first post to remind people to interact with past responses.

As it stands, there's probably only so much room for growth while still sticking to a limited indie selection. You need numbers and bigger games to have them act as passive advertisements when anyone looks at their page and sees the bundle, and to get featured by itch or media outlets, and I'm not very enthusiastic about casting a wider net with entries.

It might help participants, but they could also be proactive about searching out and joining existing big charity bundles and achieve the same effect.

Theres a lot of changes I can make that might help things, at least in terms of tracking, switching to fully paid so games stay in users libraries (I think I'll go to at least tiered, with at cost games taking like $5 to unlock or something just for the heck of it) and I know directly the number of people that got it, having higher quality standards for entries in the hopes that will generate more buzz from users, moving from charity to splitting revenue so people that submit games get something out of it and I can see how far the games and bookclub themselves can carry the concept of the bundle and having less restrictions on how the bundle can be set up, moving off itch for various reasons, but in the end I doubt any of them would have significant effect.

There are about two ways to get traction on the internet.

Have something that gets a huge wave of attention from various sources due to only semi predictable factors, or building up interest, community, and brand recognition slowly over time. the more you do the second, the higher chance you have of randomly chancing on the first.

I was hoping that the bundle could be a case of the first at least a little, but that didn't end up even close to happening, there was just no coverage or discussion except for the tiny amount I could get through cold messaging influencers I looked up.

So basically, no matter what I change about the bundle, the result will be the same, maybe a bit better through the second method, building on the success of the first bundle.

In other words, I think I'm gonna do everything pretty much the same as the first bundle for the second one, its easier and I doubt there would be significant improvement from any change. There is though, one major caveat:

It looks like itch has majorly changed how you set up bundles in a way that could make things dramatically easier. I'll have to confirm this with them, but if its true that should make the amount of work necessary to set this stuff up way less, and give us room to try other things on the side.

That's about it! Thanks again for all your help, and I hope this was as engaging an adventure for you as it has been for me!

One day, you are living your normal live like everyone else, breathing the air, feeling the trees, basking in the sunlight. The next day, the TV is predicating destruction and screaming about death. And your family is no longer there...

THE MAN ON THE TV is a solo horror analogue game inspired by different forms of analog horror, the "Servicio a la comunidad" tv spots and the work of Alfred Valley. Submerge yourself in panic as you realise that those people you've seen on your screen promoting the killings of other beings are more than just assholes, light soul sucking spectres and how they take everyone around you.

It contains:

• Simple solo rules to identify what's a photofage and what's not (Also available in Spanish)
• The photofage classifications with warnings and different types of intervention to them
• 5 different sealing methods
• Warnings you need to heed
• A logo you can add to recordings to identify them as seals
• A poster (Coming soon)

Hope you like it! This game is part of the Pareidolia: Evil Eye world. If you liked that one, I'm sure you will like this one,

https://jules-ampere.itch.io/the-man-on-the-tv

https://itch.io/b/3605/indie-charity-bundle-for-accessibilit

At 360 donations totaling $2200 and who knows how many more free downloads, we've come a long way! Especially for a bundle mostly composed of individual little known passion projects!

Thank you so much for making our goals into reality! But, we can still go even further! If you know any person or community that's into rpgs, nows the time to give them heads up! It's the last chance to pick up $100 of stellar RPGs at a discount!

Once again using my BRP derived rules (d100 roll under), but with very crunchy resource management in an RPG about a VERY under-represented setting. I have never seen a historical RPG set in Pre-Columbian America. So I made one. This is as historically accurate as I could make it and still keeping it a fantasy game.

It's free, 215 pages of print and play on my itch.io page, https://sts-gamer.itch.io/ayni-bahadzid I hope that you enjoy looking into the past and playing in this massively overlooked period of history and take up the challenge of keeping your people safe and the spirits calm.

Excerpt: "This rulebook utilizes the cultural concepts of Ayni (Quechua: “sacred reciprocity”) and Bahadzid (Diné Bizaad: “something dangerous or harmful”) not as generic fantasy tropes, but as structural frameworks to model how Indigenous peoples across the Americas understood their relationship with the natural world. Survival is inextricably linked to cosmic balance, taboo, and environmental stewardship. The following rules are a deliberately syncretic game abstraction inspired by recurring concepts of reciprocity, kinship, obligation, and relationship found in many Indigenous traditions of the Americas. This is not “the religion of the Indians.” This is an RPG cosmology assembled from recurring themes found in multiple Indigenous traditions. They are not intended to describe the religion of any single historical people. These terms serve as the mechanical bridge between material survival and Indigenous cosmology.

Ayni & Bahadzid does not utilize standard fantasy "races" or "classes." Humanity is a singular whole. What makes a character distinct is not their biology, but their relationship to the land, their language, and their community. The steps below move from the vast, unyielding laws of the earth down to the intimate obligations of your family campfire. Choosing a Biome or a Mobility strategy is not a restriction on who your character can be; it is an acknowledgement of the physical reality they have learned to harmonize with. You are building a real person who has grown up inside a living history, bound by a specific vocabulary, and accountable to a web of ancestors and spirits."

Not something I'm set on or anything, I just figured since I'm gonna be there and since probably some other RPG people are gonna be there, we should see if we want to do anything related to the book club or just have a chance to chat in person.

There's also the option to reserve a space to meet up as a community, but honestly I think our group is a bit too small to have enough people willing to meet up for that, if a bunch of people are Interested in meeting up though, I'll think about that too.

Whatever you do, don't think about polar bears!

For a while, I have made unconventional TTRPGs, using unconventional play styles, objects, mechanics and others, ending in things like the collection Your body is not a fish.

A specific game design paradigm was born out of a college project, entering several tags and groups to clasify itself, but never actually fitting a particular category. With this in mind, the MENTAL ROLE PLAYING GAME and its characteristics have cimented in my brain and I want to share it with you, so you can explore my ideas, judge them or relate to them, and destroy////remix them.

Included stuff:

• The MRPG manifesto translated to English and Spanish
• Posters in both English and Spanish
• A logo you can use to identify your work as inspired by the manifesto (read the manifesto for more information)

https://jules-ampere.itch.io/the-mrpg-manifesto

It is a collection on my personal principles to create compact games that aren't played using dice, cards, oracles or that require a tabletop enviroment to be engaged with. I propose the term Mental role playing game as an alternative that describes a flexible category of games like Die Dream and Pareidolia: Evil Eye, games that intervene in daily situations to propose an emergent fiction in situations outside traditional tabletop spaces.

If you haven't seen the charity bundle before check it out https://itch.io/b/3605/indie-charity-bundle-for-accessibility-in-ttrpgs-pwyw 45 rpg projects entirely pay what you want mostly sourced from this sub! Donations go to DOTS an accessibility! charity!

But most of you probably have seen it at this point. It's been a long journey, from gathering and vetting submissions in a jam, to contacting charities, to transferring the games to a bundle and promoting it once it was open, we even got the YouTuber DianaOfTheRose to make some social media posts about it!

And none of it would be possible with the years of game submissions and interactions in our book club in this community! Thank you for helping raise $2000 dollars for charity, which 23 days left of the bundle being open!

If you haven't checked the bundle out yet please do! whether you can donate or not, more people playing passion project RPGS like ours is always appreciated, and once you have check out this survey! https://s.surveyplanet.com/ycynwnb4

If you have any ideas what to do for our next bundle, feel free to mention it there, or leave a comment not this post. Thanks again!

Not sure how popular solo-journaling RPGs are on this particular sub, but here is my first attempt at one!

Heist Bastards (D6 heist RPG, featuring sudden but inevitable betrayal): makeshiftgamesonline.itch.io/heist-bastards

Demagoblins (City-Building RPG about lying and politics): makeshiftgamesonline.itch.io/demagoblins

I just released THE WHOLE OF US, a Solo Journaling RPG I made for One Page RPG Jam 2026.

The basic idea is that you play one person divided into multiple personalities.

https://pusheeneiro.itch.io/twou

You start with three personalities, each with their own Strength, Weakness and Desire.

The main mechanic is that you choose what your character tries to do, but you don't freely choose which personality takes control.

If you fail a test, the current personality becomes less stable and the failure may create a completely new personality, one capable of doing what the previous one couldn't.

Personalities can also fulfill their Desires and eventually become integrated into the whole, passing what they learned on to the remaining personalities.

The current release is the printer-friendly one page edition, and I'm giving it away 100% free for the launch.

Thanks for checking it out!

https://artemisnova.itch.io/the-unretirables-a-one-page-rpg

Indie RPGs Dublin community is back for this year's One-Page RPG Jam with our entry: The Unretirables.

You play as retired superheroes reluctantly reuniting one last time, because there's no one else who can save the world. Now, however, you face not only villains but also your own frailty and on top of that, all that drama that caused the original team to fracture and disband in the first place.

So dust off the spandex and get ready to hurl killer robots into volcanoes while simultaneously addressing years worth of unresolved grievances.

Here is the draft! Fill it out if you want and tell me what you think! I've never really done one of these before so I'm sure I've missed some things!

I got my second submission ready for the one-page RPG jam just in time: Play as a melting Greenland glacier caring for a struggling polar bear in "It's a warm day in the arctic and you are a Greenland glacier", my solo TTRPG of arctic ecology. https://sleepy-badger-games.itch.io/its-a-warm-day-in-the-arctic-and-you-are-a-greenland-glacier It turned out quite board-game-y for a solo TTRPG. I tried to design a journaling game you could actually win or loose. (As per Skeleton Code Machine suggestion )
Please let me know what you think. Oh, and with the help of my Mexican partner I could also release it in Spanish! Yay!

Thanks for all the support as always! I plan to try and give it one last big round of promotion once we hit $2000 so you'll hear more from me then! Here's the bundle https://itch.io/b/3605/indie-charity-bundle-for-accessibility-in-ttrpgs-pwyw