Chris Eaves

I spent 8 years creating a TTRPG that nobody bought or knows about. Then I spent a year planning out a series of 8 books set in that world. Over the last 17 days, I wrote 18k words of the first book.

I don't care if nobody reads it. It's fun as crap.

HP increases per level! What happens when you level up? You do more damage? You take more damage? But enemy hp rises too. So it's all a wash anyway. Instead of "NUMBER GO UP HURHUR" you could get more varied and interesting abilities. New ways to deal or defend from damage.

🎲 #RPGDesign time! 🎲

If you could scrap one common RPG mechanic entirely and replace it with something new, what would it be and why? What would the new system look like, and how would it improve the game experience?

#TTRPG #GameDesign

Someone on mastodon mentioned what a pain point prophecies are in play. Soooo... I'm writing a whole blog post about techniques you can use from performers and charlatans as both players and GMs to convey knowledge and that prophetic aura. Stay tuned friendos!

I love introducing a little fear into teleporting. Nightcrawler rules from X-Men.

"Can you see your destination?"

"...no..."

"Well, let's hope you didn't splint yourself. Grab that scatter die from the 40k stuff."

I've never actually gone through with it, but it keeps TP from being abused.

I've done this...

"Can you just get a plate and stop eating like a savage?"

"That's one less plate to run through the dishwasher and that one of us has to put away later."

I love the idea of blood mages being the only ones who understand the risks of blood transmitted pathogens, so they practice proper sterilization and have ppe.

"Why are you dressed like that, brother Amos?"

"Um. Ye Olde Hepatitis A? Why are you NOT dressed like this?"

#TTRPG people!

As a GM, what player ideas have you said yes to? Or as players, had a GM say yes to? Some idea that was totally crazy but fell into the rule of cool and didn't ruin the campaign so you just rolled with it and went for it?

Mixing contrasting themes be like:

▶️Grimdark worldbuilding. Cute talking animals.
▶️High-stakes action. Characters bickering over lunch.
▶️Serious finale. A perfectly timed joke.

It shouldn’t work, but it does.

Do you enjoy unexpected or subverted combos in your stories?

#WritingCommunity #TTRPG

This is one of the spellcasting rule pages. Specifically regarding Cutting Corners, Component Spellcasting, and Spell Backfire Effects. Purple background with black text on white boxes. With purple text headers.

How does A Tale of Snakes and Rats handle spellcasting failures? Well, if you treat magic with respect and prepared your spells properly, the failsafes you included will ensure that nothing happens. BUT! You can cut corners to cast spells faster. And the more you do it, the more like things get Bad™

Yes! That drives me crazy! Magic is just a gun that shoots effects or doesn't in D&D.

When I was designing my game, I had a ball coming up with backfire effects for when you cut corners to cast spells faster. Bad Stuff could happen, but only if you knowingly take the risks.

#ttrpg people!

Favorite rpg class archetype, and favorite game to play it in, go!

Big strong bruiser, glass cannon wizard, holy warrior, red mage turned to black after the war of the lance?

Can't say I've heard of that one. But if a game gives those vibes I'ma probably skip it...

I feel targeted. I have the Alien rpg, Zweihander, Legend of the Five Rings, Delta Green, Dark Heresy, Wrath & Glory, Vampire, Dresden, Mutant Year Zero, couple others. Only played D&D and the game I wrote. Ugh.

Hello all the people who've recently followed me!

I like making stuff. Recently finished writing a ttrpg after 8 years.

Now I'm working on a video game of my ttrpg.

Also writing a program for writers that'll basically be notecards on steroids. Because I want to use it. Taking ideas for that.

I really hope you have some shellshocked locals who can deliver exposition about the forest coming alive and attacking people. And an overly butch person to deliver one liners like "I ain't got time to bleed", "If it bleeds, we can kill it", and "you're terminated fucker!"

So your players are just going to walk into the middle of two factions of killing machines? 🤣

#ttrpg people!

What kinds of external media do you incorporate into your campaigns? Or reference when you make a character? I've played as 40k style imperial zealots before. Wrote a campaign (or several) shamelessly derived from the SCP foundation. I borrow names just to see if anybody notices.

#ttrpg people!

Do you include star maps, celestial bodies, constellations and the like in your campaigns? Associate them with times of year or months? Do they have any bearing on your world / campaign? Does a passing comet empower fire magic users or somesuch? A moon empower water magic users?

This was the first version of the spells page. It contains the spells, Aircutter, Alternate Path, and Animate Stone. This layout was similar to D&D, but with blue header text. The original goal was classic fantasy parchment stuff. This was before I had settled on a visual aesthetic for the world, so it was more classic fantasy, thus the classic look.

This page has the spells Burning Touch, Camouflage, Candleflame, and Cloaking. This version was when I was experimenting with red as the header text. I was also testing if I was alright with texting flowing to the next page. I was not.

This version has Aircutter, Alternate Path, Animate Stone, And Annihilation, which flows to the next page. Here I had begun experimenting with bars of color on the header names as well as cutouts to pages behind. I had begun to figure out that I didn't want it to look like D&D and was moving away from it, but I was still in the realm of that type of design.

In the end, I went a wildly different direction. This page has Aircutter, Alternate Path, Animate Stone, Annihilation, and Aura Scry. Rather than coloring the header text, I opted to have the back page be colored and nest all the text in boxes for contrast. Each section has different colored pages to easily tell them apart. The purple here is the same as the Loremage, though all spellcasters use these spells. The boxes were inspired in part by the Alien RPG. This specific box design came after I had figured out the in-world aesthetics and designed a layout as it would have come from their world.

Who loves a retrospective? The content of my game was 80% complete like 6 years ago. I spent those last 6 years just experimenting with layout, art, and rewrites. Here are older versions of the first page of spells compared with the final version. I settled on the boxy layout during the lockdown.

#ttrpg people!

Why are so many ttrpgs focused around adventuring? Where are the games about nothing? What game can let me reenact Seinfeld's parking garage? ATHF's Total Recarl episode? ASIP's gas selling scheme episode? Metalocalypse' Mordhaus tour episode?

I need this.

They must be the kings of mosh pits.

a cartoon of a man with a beard and the words hackin-frackin sassa-frassin dad-burnit Alt: a cartoon of a man with a beard humping up and down in a fit of rage saying the words rackin-frackin, sassa-frassin, dad-burnit, riff-raffin, doggone!

#TTRPGQuestion

Simple one today

What Is your favorite insult or slang that you've made for your game world and explain how it came to be?

It's on an equatorial island, lousy with magic. Innate spellcasters and university mages are common. Shadowy groups work with the universities to monitor the island for portals and deviations from the norm of other monitored parallel realities resulting from incursions by extradimensional monsters.

The rules page for the Machine minor class traits. Red header text on black backgrounds, with white outlines. In the bottom right is a cyborg character. Her eyes have glowing red irises and the side of her face in shadow has hexagons showing through from underneath. The colorful hair is the redult of running the image through the glitch generating program I wrote.

Hi Vulpes. I seem to see your posts a lot...

I spent 8 years writing a #ttrpg. It's done. It's awesome. And I 3D modeled all the art inside. Well, not all. Some of it is just 2D. Anyway, the world is mostly low / magitek, but I couldn't resist finding a way to include some high tech fringe stuff.

Well yall it's #TTRPGrising time! Seems I've somehow gotten to be above the usual mark for advertising myself so time to see what yall have!

If your under 1k
Share your work below or that of folks you admire (no ai jank or I'll block)

Tell us about yourselves and what your doing!

Adorable black dog sitting on the floor and looking at me. Kid's green spinning chair thing in the background. And my knee.

Adorable black dog sitting on the couch and not looking at me. Kid's spinning chair thing in the background. And my leg.

It's only been a couple months so he looks the same lol

Hi fellow ttrpg creator! My week is going great. I finished my game a couple weeks ago, so I've been hanging out with my kid without the nagging subconcious urge to work on it. I'm free!

a pink cake with a slice taken out of it is on a table Alt: a pink cake with a slice taken out of it is on a table as the slice is removed the layers inside are rainbow coloured

HAPPY LOKI'S DAY MY LOVELIES! (shut up Thor)

💚Stop by and tell me how your week is going?
💚Hype up the project you're working on?
💚Hype up someone else's project?
💚Shout if you want CAKE or HUGS?
💚Never chatted b4? Dive in everyone's welcome!

"What... are you doing?"

"I installed an NFC chip reader in my forehead that's linked to my brain. So now I can just tap to read NFC enabled books."

*slams forehead onto the next book*