by leroy43

An item RPG Item: A Visitor's Guide to the Rainy City has been added to the geeklist 2026 Annual Geek Review Challenge

by Damdael

An item RPG Item: Book 06: Deathtrap Dungeon has been added to the geeklist Gamebook rankings by Damdael

by Damdael

An item RPG Item: Book 05: City of Thieves has been added to the geeklist Gamebook rankings by Damdael

by Damdael

An item RPG Item: Book 02: The Citadel of Chaos has been added to the geeklist Gamebook rankings by Damdael

by Damdael

An item RPG Item: Book 03: The Forest of Doom has been added to the geeklist Gamebook rankings by Damdael

by leroy43

An item RPG Item: The Troubleshooters has been added to the geeklist [Roger's Reviews] The Complete Collection

by Lagnis

BRP done right was what he kept saying when he was working on it I’m quite sure.

by Newsh

Related Item: Herald's Call

My first heuristic for Friday is:
Do not allow yourself to be distracted.

I need absolute focus otherwise I'll more than likely end up losing. 🙄

Best wishes for the GotW, Rachel. 🙂

by aramis

quozl wrote:

aramis wrote:

My homemade L5R5 screen... 4 panels 5x12" balsa, joined with bias tape, with the tables I needed most. That included:
All the families and their mon and clan. The action lists for skirmish, duel, and intrigue.

I used a booklet for opportunity spends; 3 copies (2 for the table to share, 1 for me).

Why such a low screen? It was to catch the dice, more than screen things off. We were playing 8p on a conference table... so it did screen the dice when I wanted it to... but I often rolled outside it.

Normally, when I use a screen, it's laid flat on the table, save that 4.25" tall one I made.

Do you have a picture of your balsa screen? It sounds really nice.

No, nor the screen. My eldest snagged it.

by aramis

pdzoch wrote:

What hobbies other than playing role-playing game do you have? Do you try to integrate that other hobby into your RPG sessions in any way? Which of your other hobbies has the largest community? The smallest community? (Any with no community you are aware of?)

Not exactly a hobby; more an occasional OCD manic state - I compose string quartets and quintets. One for mouse sized instruments – it's painful. large community, in which i am a nobody.

I used to do SCA Rapier Fencing, plus Scots Reenactment, and before that a little SCA Heavy. I have been an SCA herald off and on.

by leroy43

Full disclosure number one - this is a repeat of my own blog here on BGG.
Full disclosure number two - I've read this RPG cover to cover but haven't actually run a session myself.

There was an RPG Geek question of the day recently that asked What genre of RPG have you never played and never expect to play in your whole life?

My own answer to that question was, in part, Scanning my shelf, I do see one RPG I don't think will ever hit the table, and that's The Troubleshooters. The system looks fun and the theme is definitely quirky, being set in a fictitious 1960s Europe inspired by the bandes dessinées of the era - Tintin, Spirou, Yoko Tsuno, et. al.

The rules and background are pretty careful about not locking either the players or locales into stereotypes, but at the same time, the entire thing is pretty 1960s Europe ethnocentric, and I don't think I'd have a good time playing or running it. One of the prettiest covers though, and I'll freely admit as a BD fan that's why I bought it."

Having bought it, of course I decided to read it, and there's a lot of good things to unpack about it.

Like me, the author of the game grew up with bandes dessinées. He took the extra step of wondering what it would be like to play a game with that kind of overarching backdrop - a fictitious 1960s Europe.

The book is about 240 pages all told, and the art throughout oozes that BD vibe, right from the table of contents onwards. Character creation can be custom built, but players are strongly encouraged to (and really ought to) use one of the many templates available, which hit pretty much every trope one might find in your BD of choice.

Each character comes with plot hooks, which are important because the game master is supposed to focus the current story on one of the players, with the others playing a supporting role. This is not to say that the players don't all have equal air time or opportunity to contribute.

Rather, the idea is that, if we take Tintin as a classic example of the genre, he'll be off investigating something, while Haddock, Tournesol, and the Dupondt characters follow other avenues to support that plot line. In other scenes, Haddock will be the focus, with the others supporting, etc. To quote the book, "If your character isn’t one of the Plot Hook characters, instead have your character be the sidekick to the Plot Hook characters and try to make them be the main characters of the adventure. Try not to steal the limelight. Instead, support the Plot Hook characters, help them stand out and just generally make them seem awesome!".

One thing the book does really well is provide a lot of examples via dialogue between the game master and a character.

The game uses mostly percentile dice for resolving actions, and six sided dice otherwise.

Characters have skills, and the templates give you a bundle of them that might look like this: Status 75, Charm 65, Contacts 65, Languages 65, Red Tape 65, Alertness 45, Credit 45, Investigation 45, Search 45, Subterfuge 45, Willpower 45. Set all other Skills to 15.

Rolling against a skill isn't a binary pass/fail, but rather meant to be used by the game master (Director) to narrate the action. If you're in a car chase scene, a failure might mean a complication like a fender bender or narrowly avoiding running over a pedestrian while the lead car gets a lead on you or turns down an alley to escape pursuit. What happens next will then depend on what the characters choose to do next.

Speaking of which complications are a way that players and the director alike and generate story points for characters. A complication must be role played to be earned for the most part. There's an extensive list of them that can yield various amounts of points. Those story points are then spent later by the players to help with specific outcomes.

For example, you can spend story points to do a handful of things, including to add "something major". It in effect hands some narrative control to the players. One example of adding something major is "the old lover will help the characters escape". For some game masters, handing that much control to the players might feel anathema, but I like the idea because in the shared storytelling that this RPG represents, it gives the players some agency - and of course they need to spend those accumulated story points!

Behind all of the ideas and inspirations that the game provides for the players, the Director is provided with some specific "eyes only" information about a world wide organization known as The Octopus.

If you've read Tintin, there's Rastapopulos as a villain who appears regularly in a number of the books. Blake & Mortimer have Olrik backed by the other side. James Bond had SPECTRE and other super villain organizations. This is all part of the overall trope.

A lot of the information about The Octopus is how to build plots around them and provide that cloak and dagger feel to the whole enterprise.

Overall, The Troubleshooters is really well written, the examples clear, the art gorgeous, and just well done.

However, the flip side is that I have little interest in running a game myself. There are a few reasons for this.

Running a game like this, which draws so much inspiration from mid-century European bandes dessinées comes with a set of challenges, especially when viewed through a contemporary lens. While its tone is light-hearted, adventurous, and steeped in nostalgia, personally I feel that the world it evokes is one shaped by a very particular worldview - one where Europe sits firmly at the centre of civilization, and the rest of the world is either exotic, dangerous, or in need of rescuing.

This kind of baked in ethnocentrism isn’t overt in the book or the game's rules, but it lingers in the genre's bones. Western Europe, and especially its institutions, are usually portrayed as the natural arbiters of order and rationality. The protagonists - implicitly or explicitly - are often white, urbane, and European, solving mysteries or fighting secret organizations in locales that are rendered mysterious, threatening, or quaint by comparison. When other regions appear - Africa, Asia, the Middle East - they're usually set dressing for Western heroics. I myself would perforce guilty of this as a game master, and not out of malice, but personal ignorance. Thus the people from these places are rarely full characters. Rather, they're stereotypes, background figures, or villains. Caricatures!

Layered on top of this is the genre’s uncomfortable relationship with the legacy of the "Yellow Peril" trope. Pulp stories and spy thrillers from the early to mid 20th century often leaned heavily on imagery of inscrutable Asian masterminds. Figures like Fu Manchu - who posed a sinister, alien threat to the West.

Even when the imagery isn’t used directly, the structure of those stories - the exoticization of Asian cultures, the emphasis on secretive Eastern cabals, the language of danger and mystery - remains deeply ingrained in the genre’s DNA. It’s all too easy, even unintentionally, to fall into the rhythms of stories where a "foreign" culture becomes the problem, and the European agents are the solution.

Sometimes this is defended as satire or homage. A loving recreation of the genre’s tropes, warts and all. But satire, especially when it's lighthearted or nostalgic, is a tricky thing. Without clear signals that you're critiquing the source material rather than celebrating it, it becomes difficult to tell whether a piece is holding up a mirror or just repeating old ideas uncritically. A game like The Troubleshooters, which delights in its setting and tone, doesn’t always give players the tools to interrogate those legacies - or to know when they’re veering into territory that can make people uncomfortable or feel excluded.

This can become especially fraught at the table, where the people involved bring their own identities, experiences, and comfort levels. A player might be asked to navigate a scenario that leans heavily on Orientalist imagery, or to play a character in a setting that treats their real world culture as a backdrop or stereotype. Even if no harm is intended, harm can still be felt and for many players, the thrill of espionage or globetrotting adventure can be overshadowed by a sense of not belonging, or worse, being reduced to a trope.

That doesn’t mean you can’t play The Troubleshooters, or enjoy its playful take on a classic genre. It just means it’s worth taking the time to reflect on what you’re bringing to the table. Talking with your group, being aware of where these tropes come from, and thinking about how to actively reframe or subvert them can go a long way. You might decide to portray exotic locales as lived in, complex places with heroes and villains of their own. You might flip the script on who the protagonists are, or avoid villain archetypes that draw on racist or colonial imagery. Most importantly, you can make sure everyone around the table feels safe, seen, and excited to explore a world that respects the real one we all live in.

by Jeffrywith1e

SpaceAcre - Reassuring Pat
Youtube Video