Crow's Corner

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Crow's Corner is a blog filled with hands-on reviews, practical play advice and exploration of indie and indie-adjacent roleplaying games. Links Crow's Corner https://crowscorner.bearblog.dev/

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A Squirrel Plays
Video

A Squirrel Plays

English
Skrat from the YouTube channel A Squirrel Plays is a rodent of many hats. YouTuber, Author, Streamer, Game Designer, Tester, and Reviewer! His YouTube time is spent trying to lift up and promote others while also working on his own projects and sharing his methods and way of thinking (or lack thereof) when it comes to both game design and storytelling. When he’s not playing the YouTube game or in a TTRPG session, he’s typing away and working on his next entry for Kesshonite Legends. A series of high-fantasy novels that can be read in any order that all take place in the same universe. If you have a TTRPG you’d like to show off, feel free to reach out to Skrat. Be prepared to run a game for a live play so you can properly show it off! If reaching out through email and you don’t hear anything back, please try again as Gmail likes to mark things as spam incorrectly. Links   youtube.com - Youtube channel discord.gg - Discord server buymeacoffee.com - Buy Me a Coffee Page amazon.com - Kesshonite Legends on Amazon asquirrelplaysyt@gmail.com - Email

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Dungeons & Dragons (1974)
Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Dungeons & Dragons (1974)

High-Fantasy
English
Wizards of the Coast
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is the original fantasy tabletop roleplaying game, designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and published by Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) in 1974 as a small boxed set of three booklets. It grew out of Arneson's Blackmoor game, a medieval variation on Dave Wesely's Braunstein wargames played with individual characters instead of armies, which he showed to Gygax. The two developed it as "The Fantasy Game", and Gygax did the final writing. The set was produced on a budget of $2,000, with $100 for artwork, and it was amateurish in production, assuming that players already knew wargaming. About 1,000 copies sold in its first year and about 3,000 in 1975. The set stayed in print until 1979, and it is often called Original D&D (OD&D). The system directly evolved from Chainmail, the miniatures wargame whose rules it used for combat. In 1977 TSR split the line into the lighter Basic set and the more structured Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition (1977), which was later followed by Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition (1989). Description Players each take on a single adventurer, a fighting-man, magic-user or cleric, and explore dungeons and wilderness. One player takes the role of the Dungeon Master (DM), the referee and storyteller who runs the setting and non-player characters and decides outcomes using the rules and their own interpretation. The three booklets are Men & Magic (36 pages), Monsters & Treasure (40 pages) and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (36 pages). The game asks a table to fill in a lot of gaps. It assumes that players know miniatures wargaming, and its wargaming roots show in the attitude that players are not very attached to their characters. Character creation is fast, death is common and replacements join the party, so it suits groups who enjoy improvising rulings more than reading rules.

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Blades in the Dark (2017)
Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Blades in the Dark (2017)

English
Heist
Evil Hat Productions
Blades in the Dark is a heist-themed tabletop roleplaying game system about a crew of daring misfits  on the streets of an industrial fantasy city. Published by Evil Hat Productions in 2017 and designed by John Harper, it introduced the highly influential Forged in the Dark rules engine. BitD revolutionized the heist genre in tabletop gaming by pushing players straight into the act, eliminating the "planning phase". The system it loosely evolved from is Apocalypse World Description In Blades in the Dark, players are part of a criminal organization in Doskvol, a grim Victorian era city. The city is protected by a wall of lightning, to keep any threat on the outside. Players create their characters as either smugglers, thieves, assassins or cultists and explore the criminal underworld, perform dangerous heists, manage gang warfare and grow their criminal organization. The game focuses heavily on narrative momentum and failing forward. Characters are competent but flawed, constantly accumulating stress, trauma, and heat from the law as their gang rises to power. System Overview & Key Features Action Roll (d6 Dice Pool) The core mechanic uses a pool of six-sided dice(d6) based on a character's action rating. The highest die result will determine the outcome of the action. 6 is considered a full success, 4-5 is a partial success with a consequence, and 1-3 is a failure. Rolling multiple full successes is considered a critical success. Position and Effect Before every roll, the Game Master explicitly states the character's Position (Controlled, Risky, or Desperate) and Effect (Limited, Standard, or Great). This transparently communicates the exact stakes and potential fallout of the action before the dice hit the table. Stress and Resistance Characters have a Stress track. Players can spend Stress to give themselves for extra dice when rolling. They can also use it to assist an ally, or fuel their special abilities. Players can also spend Stress when facing any situation or consequence the GM throws at them, this makes the characters very skilled, but forces them to consider when to spend it. The Flashback Mechanic Instead of spending hours planning a heist, the crew simply chooses a target, picks a detail, and jumps right into the action. Later, they can use Stress, to envoke a flashback moment, where they explain how they had already planned for such a situation, or had "solved" it beforehand. Progress Clocks The game uses circular progress tracks called Clocks to visually represent approaching danger or the progress of a complex task. A clock might represent the alert level of the city watch, the structural integrity of a safe vault, or the patience of a rival gang leader. The Crew as a Character The criminal organization the players run has its own character sheet. The organization gains experience, levels up, claims territory, and unlocks special abilities, ensuring that the gang's rise to power is just as mechanically significant as the characters'

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