Hey all, I'm watt, creator of the Ennie-award-winning, Nausicaa-inspired Mothership setting Cloud Empress. I'll be launching a Castle in the Sky/Arcane-inspired TTRPG called Rust Wings for Mausritter next week.

I'll be checking and responding to this post synchronously until about 6 PM CST US.

Happy to answer any questions about indie tabletop roleplaying game publishing, crowdfunding, my designs/design process, worldbuilding, writing literary adventures, Ghibli, etc.

Update: Closing the AMA down. Thanks for all the awesome questions and appreciation for my work!

**Come here and talk about anything!**

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This post will stay stickied for (at least) the week-end. Please enjoy this space where you can talk about anything: your last game, your current project, your patreon, etc. You can even talk about video games, ask for a group, or post a survey or share a new meme you've just found. This is the place for small talk on /r/rpg.

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The off-topic rules may not apply here, but the other rules still do. This is less the Wild West and more the Mild West. Don't be a jerk.

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I love crunchy tactical combat RPGs. Lancer and Pathfinder are some of my favorites.

However what I don't like about them is that you can wait a while for your turn then accomplish nothing because you miss or they make their save or whatever. That just feels bad. I'd prefer if the random element was how much you accomplish on your turn, not whether you accomplish anything at all.

Are there any games like this you'd recommend?

I recently stumbled onto Joseph R Lewis' Writing RPG Adventures series and his read aloud format and strategy completely changed my opinion on the usefulness of read aloud text in adventures. In short: He condenses the read aloud text to <50 words and anything that has more detail gets bolded and underlined so the GM knows to reference the bulleted points below the text for more information.

I plan to check out his adventures for more details on that thoughtful design to see how I like it for my own games. I try to practice being concise with descriptions, but can sometimes ramble past being useful.

What adventures or modules have you run that felt did an amazing job formatting or condensing information nicely to allow GMs to spend less time prepping and more time running?

I'm looking to run Public Access as kind of a one off or very short campaign for some friends. I see there are a bunch of Mysteries available on DriveThru, and didn't know if y'all could recommend your top 3 favorite mysteries,

Hi! My bf loves Exalted, mainly Dragon Blooded political campaigns, with a cold war between the Great Houses hidden in supposed good relationships, the empire falling down around them since the empress disappeared, the magic past of powerful artifacts from the solars, the unknowns of far realms... I literaly cannot stop him when he starts talking about how amazing all of that is.

The thing is... he loathes the system. All of them. And I was thinking maybe giving him as a present a diferent ruleset he can use with Exalted, or a similar game.

Do you have any advice what's the best similar games? I've heard about Godbound, but he's not interested just in epic powers but in the political relationships between the Houses in the realm and the empire.

Any advice?

I am a roleplayer not someone who likes crunch. Through and through. the funny thing about this? In roleplay heavy systems like Masks or Avatar the last Airbender I prefer the sidelined combat since I have more freedom in it to do as I please while in more crunchy systems like Pathfinder? I prefer roleplaying because I am not as restricted because there's little to no rules when it comes to roleplaying.

Am I doing something wrong?

I'm looking for a good source for artwork for an upcoming Scum and Villainy game. I want to have a number of backgrounds to display to give a sense of place for the game.

I plan to purchase the Sci Fi bundle at from Czepeku (I'll also be using the token artwork for NPCs) but they only have about 40 background scenes. Most of their library is battle maps, which isn't necessary for a TotM game.

I feel like I stumbled across a marketplace with a lot of different artists posting their work for sale, but I can't seem to find it again and I don't seem to have bookmarked it.

Anybody know of another good high quality option like Czepeku with a lot of good 16x9 sci-fi art? Bonus points if it comes with animated versions. Fully willing to sign up for a patreon or pay for a bundle if needed. Just trying to find options.

Edit: I also really love James RPG Art on Patreon, but sadly it's all fantasy based and my next game is Sci-Fi :( Would love to find a similar patreon to this one but for Sci-Fi scenes/art.

Just curious, I was a big part of the first two Zinequests where I saw TONS of people flocking to one big page of zines (Kickstarter) and I kind of dipped out of the scene after ZQ2.

It seems a lot has changed over the years. Zinemonth split between Kickstarter, Backerkit, Itch io, and private pages honestly feels very overwhelming to me, I find I'm mostly only finding projects by word of mouth this time around.

Have you found it harder to engage with the community making stuff lately? Any wrap up pages or places in general that help you stay on top of whats going on in the RPG space?

What are the greatest picks?

Has anyone played Outcast Silver Raiders? It looks gorgeous, and I may want to get it for the art alone, but does it play well at the table? I love OSE and other deadly, grim type games. Is it just a reskin of OSE? Did you enjoy it?

Neuro Shell is a game inspired by Disco Elysium where all players simultaneously play the split mind of an amnesiac who has to solve who they are, what happened to them, and some greater conflict all while being set up for failure.

It’s a very simple setting-agnostic 1-page system, and a book filled with content and art.

If you’re interested in getting a copy you can go to my website: https://ruleitgames.com

If you want to join the community you can join our discord https://discord.gg/ztQCHcNPP3

Thanks everyone :)