Oh nice, I love Gloomhaven! (and other massive cooperative campaign games.) Which class are you playing? (let’s keep it spoiler-friendly.)

I meant the fireball itself! Object source lighting is tricky, and while I dabble in it, I don’t feel comfortable giving tips about it… But the yellow on the fireball can at least give it the effect of looking like it’s glowing :)

These minis look great, and I love the writeup of exactly how you got them this way!

I’m a huge fan of the skin of the Spined Devils, that’s pretty perfect. What kind of purple did you use as a base there?

Also really love the peg leg devil, such a clever way to deal with a failed print! And at least in the picture you really can’t tell it wasn’t supposed to look that way at first.

And about the fireball: my advice would be to get bright/light yellow in the recesses. LIke a wash, but then to lighten it instead of darken. It can be a bit tricky depending on what’s underneath it, getting the light colors opaque enough. But for me, that works wonder in giving glow effects.

Really cool work, thanks for sharing!

I like it a lot! I don’t have experience using such mechanics in TTRPGs, though I feel the same way about the disappointment of rolling low. However there’s a few boardgames that come to mind that use similar mechanics, which are great. In Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood you have lots of tokens that you can use to buff your rolls/draws, but if you fail you get back everything you spent and you get to pick a new one on top of that. It actually has an extra sort of luck mitigation on top of that; random results are determined by custom dice, but all dice have a deck of cards equivalent that has all dice sides 3 times. You don’t shuffle them in between draws, so as you go the results get more and more predictable. Would really enjoy having more games with such (bad) luck mitigating mechanics!

That’s wonderful! It’s so good to be able to share something you enjoy, and have others be excited about it too.

I’m curious about your mini one shots though, is that just your partner DMing for you as 1 player? How does that work out?

That sounds fun! A lot of campaigns seem to be way too low on dungeons, and dragons (regardless of the system!) Have you been playing together long?

I’m not opposed to crowdfunding tabletop games in principle. Even bigger companies might need some guaranteed cash up front before ordering a huge print run of their product. In that respect, it’s basically a preorder.

However, there’s a lot of habits surrounding kickstarters that I could really do without. Arbitrary funding goals and contrived stretch goals (“we can make a game if we get funded at 40k, but now that we have 2m we can give you the game as intended all these extra bits!”), preying on FOMO, overpromising and underdelivering, launching half baked and undeveloped ideas as a kickstarter, etc. All of that just screams to me that their main goal is taking my money, instead of creating an awesome game and being solvent while doing so.

I don’t really do crowdfunding games anymore. Instead I wait until it hits retail, pick up a second hand copy if it doesn’t, or just don’t buy it. There are exceptions to this of companies I trust to deliver, but they’re few and far between.

That said, I kind of like what Cephalofair is doing with their current Gloomhaven campaign on Backerkit. It’s basically a preorder for a bunch of new products that’ll go in production soon, clear information, no extra FOMO bullshit, lots of content creation and events around the new products, and a really good deal compared to MRSP (and historically, their crowdfunding campaigns have been by far the cheapest way to get their products).

Ooh I’m not familiar with this game but it looks pretty cool! In what way would you say it is like Gloomhaven?

Yeah it’s been really fun so far! I mean we’re only 2 sessions in so I don’t know much about where it’s gonna go yet, but so far it’s a really different experience. I’m excited to play on, just gotta wait for people to get back from their holidays…

Hey! Unless there’s a tabletop game named Stray that I’m not aware of, I think you might be in the wrong community (this is Tabletop, not !gaming@beehaw.org).

(Although now I’m secretly hoping there’s a tabletop game just like it 😁)

I painted up a bunch of army dudes for Bolt Action, on commission, and they came out great.

Ooh you paint miniatures? Do share! I’d love to see more painted minis.

That’s hilarious! Such a clever way to escape, I love it!

I’ve had a bit of a low gaming week, only played

D&D 5e (1x 4p): We’re taking a bit of a break from our main campaign that’s been running for 5 or 6 years, and one of the players is DMing a few sessions of something from the Wild Beyond the Witchlight book. We’re enjoying the very strange Witchlight Carnaval! I play a Fairy druid, and as I discovered as we started playing, my character has ADHD. I’m really enjoying the silliness of the setting, and the DM is fantastic at doing silly voices which fits so well!

Bonus question of the week: one game I recommend to almost anyone is The Crew. Cooperative games are enjoyed by almost anyone, the rules are so simple to explain and fit pretty much everyone’s attention span, games are short but you can play it for hours too, and depending on experience and skill you can dramatically adjust the difficulty. And it’s cheap and small and easy to bring places. Great game all round!

I don’t play solo RPGs myself either, but just like solo board games, there’s loads of people who enjoy them (such as OP). Just because they don’t appeal to you, that does not invalidate someone else’s game experience and enjoyment :)

Anything you want to share about Risus and what makes it fun in your opinion?

I’m not sure, to be honest. I feel like only very few crowdfunding projects constitute “news” (and how do you decide what to include and what not?), and there’s plenty of people who don’t care for crowdfunding at all.

Perhaps better, the person who did an excellent weekly crowdfunding roundup on r/boardgames is also on lemmy. Perhaps we could include their posts here?

It’s not so much a sequel I guess, as a reimplementation of many of the mechanics. This one is themed around taking your boat around the sea, collecting fish and panoramas, and releasing your wish boats into the ocean. It’s a lovely game!

Just try to let go of the “well I’ve always done it this way” which I know is easier said than done.

Definitely easier said than done… I’m sure I’d really struggle with that.

I think the Familiar example is a great explanation. It really does sound much cooler. In 5e, you don’t really get a whole lot of meaningful choices after level 3 or so.

It’s an indie solo journaling RPG called Apothecaria

Based on this description, you seem to have picked up my “vibes” pretty well :D It sounds super cute. I’m not sure about the solo aspect, though. I generally don’t enjoy solo gaming as much, and especially TTRPGs are something I do with friends.

But generally, I like whimsical and cute settings. I’m much more of a fantasy person than scifi. Also not looking for dystopian worlds, right now that’s not something my group would handle well. Also a big fan of strange creatures (for example the Feywild is my favourite realm in D&D) and animals. Generally looking for more wholesomeness. More “Help the Forest Queen and her pack of magical forest creatures get rid of the creeping blight in the forest” rather than “A cabal of evil people has released a monster that’s set to devour all the poor people”.

Edit: Also, a strong bonus would be tight rules. With little ambiguity. So players can have clear expectations of the consequences of their actions, rather than just “GMs discretion”.

Does that help at all? I’m excited to learn about new systems.

Yeah some of my favourites are from JE too, I particularly like Finder and Downpour. And Lure of the Deep Wilderness, although it’s very much dependent on which adversary we’re playing against. Although I have a lot of love for the base game spirits too, especially when we’re introducing new people to it I tend to play one of my staples Rampant Green or Thunderspeaker. And of course Ocean is awesome, though someone else tends to snap that up quickly!

Ooh I like Tokaido a lot! It has such a serene feeling to it. I have it’s successor, Namiji, which is also a great game.

My favourite solo game is Spirit Island, it’s a pretty complex cooperative game with lots of variability. You play as nature spirits (for example the Ocean, Earth, River, Lightning) trying to defend their island from the invading settlers. All the spirits are really different with their own unique powers. The rules aren’t that complicated, but the decision space is huge. It plays really well at all player counts, and it’s one of the few games where I think true solo (i.e. 1 spirit only, instead of playing the role of multiple players yourself) is a cool experience.

Hot dang 8 kids?! You can even play big group games with just your immediate family!

I don’t think I’ve played any of your games, but I took a quick look and they seem pretty cool. What’s your favourite part about designing games?