Hi! Yes, it's a playable playtest, but its not yet in the final form i want it to be.
Once it leaves the playtest stage, the final version will be added to anyone who already own copies of this version of the game.
This game is incredibly fun just on the read itself, and it must be a blast to play - I'll try to give it a spin as soon as I can! You can read a thread with my experience reading and rolling up the tables here: https://twitter.com/raulranma/status/1401324561858187265
I wrote some thoughts about this game on a twitter thread! https://twitter.com/raulranma/status/1396203193965613067
Velouria: Bardic Duelling is a game with simple, but very flexible mechanics for resolving non-violent disputes of performance. In this game, you play along a second player: one of you creates a bard, the other plays the Audience.
Bard creation establishes your musical background, your strenghts as a performer, and prompts you to create your works (songs, numbers). This last item scratches an itch (haha!) that I only had scratched with The Sims: the joy of assigning titles to fictional artworks based on their presumed style and genre — which are, in this game, represented by a noun + a descriptor (usually an adjective).
The duels themselves are where the Audience has more decisions: they decide what the public wants to hear, who the bard's aversaries will be, and what numbers they'll play. This is also where the game's dice rolls happen: the Bard player decides a difficulty for their own performance (their ambition to play well), then roll according to their stats to try and reach that difficulty. The duel goes in rounds with both the bard and their adversary making these rolls to get points, and the points are compared at the end of the show to decide who won.
There are also some downtime mechanics: the bard character has to take time and put effort in to transform their worldliness points (acquired both by winning AND losing duels) into better stats and new works.
Finally, the game suggests other performance-like conflicts that could be played with very similar rules: rap battles, circus numbers, court cases, etc. Overall, it creates an interesting imaginative experience for two players that I can easily see being opened up for more participants.
Thank you very much for the comment. Yes, it hurt to put out, and I'm very aware it could really hurt to play! I hope that, if you do, you can remain safe and explore the feelings without harm. At any rate, thank you very much for reading. This game was my first ever design and is very personal to me 💖
Hello folks! I'm here to call your attention to my new TTRPG release - Agouro: https://raulranma.itch.io/agouro!
It's a game dark fantasy card game of inevitable prophecy, where we play with characters created around Major Arcana archetypes living through the events of a prophecy. The prophecy itself is sure to come true: we play to find out just how it happens!
If you'd like to know more about the mechanics before buying, I made a little thread on twitter to explain the basic concepts!
In summary, players take turns framing scenes, and bet using a suit of cards in exchange for the equivalent of victory points, trying to amass as much as they can to have their wishes granted when the story comes to an end!
The game is currently on sale for only U$5, but I'm adding 10 community copies for every copy sold, so if you grab one you'll make sure more people get to read it :D
Thank you very much for your time, and have a great day! <3
Heroic Archivist is a love letter to the indie game community. It creates fictional reasons and a gameplay experience to reward reading, rating and reviewing games, creating engagement and bonds between designers and their peers.
The game presents us with the task of caring for each other's creations and stories, to reach out and tell each other about the experiences we had with the words and worlds created by our fellow humans. And most importantly, it does this with the explicit intent of keeping knowledge and curiosity alive.
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As an additional bonus (not counting towards the review here), I'd like to suggest two alternative rules for getting Archivist Points, inspired by the energetic feelings that this game gave me:
Alternative Rule - Archive Explorer: if you play an indie game you reviewed, and write to the auther to tell them about your experiences with it, you gain +5 Archivist Points per paragraph of measured and thoughtful feedback. If you do it during its playtest stage, you gain an aditional +3 Archivist Points per paragraph written this way.
Alternative Rule - Archive Contributor: if you design new material for an indie game you reviewed, and share this new material with its author, you gain +5 Archivist Points.
(As Richard Kelly must've figured out by now, these new rules are just a trick for me to gain more points! Haha! Soon, the legionnares shall bow before my newfound powers!)
I'm raulranma, from Brasil!
I made this one weird game about masculinity and bullying once, and I feel maybe someone could be interested in using its mechanics for something else? https://raulranma.itch.io/the-target
I think I got it from your explanation, thank you! I'm familiar with Dungeon World, and felt it could be that the sharing of spotlight had something to do with Lore and Wits (as in: spend to add the thing). I would too like to see your take in detailing the spotlight sharing, but I understand now the constraints on words/pages sums up why it wasn't specified.
I'm gonna have this game in my sleeve for our next one shot! Thank you again, and keep up the great work!
Hello! I like a lot of what I read here, and I have some questions regarding what you intended with some of the mechanics. If this is not the proper place to ask, I apologize: I can take these anywhere else, or just drop them.
Thank you for your time. This game has some really neat design ideas from what I've seen, and I kinda want to take it out for a spin, but I'm not sure about how to handle those two aspects of it.
Again, thank you, and have a nice day!
I had an incredible time with the Artefact. I didn't know what to expect with it, and it made me think really hard about the people that came and went from my life, how they changed me, and the stories about these relationships that I keep in mind. It's an introspective experience that, ironically, makes you feel really human by turning you into a sentient object.
Thank you for writing it, and I hope the kickstarter goes well! Can't wait to try a different playbook next time around :D
Olá, eu sou o Raul (@raulranma no twitter). Sou brasileiro, trabalho com ilustração e design gráfico, e gosto muito de jogos de mesa (narrativos ou não).
Comecei no RPG através do Primeira Aventura, um livro brasileiro introdutório para o sistema d20 (até o 5º nível), e dali em diante comecei a tentar bolar minhas ideias de jogar coisas diferentes, apesar de só conhecer o que era tradicional (velhos tempos do "D&D de Naruto", hehe).
Já adulto conheci o Dungeon World (edição brasileira do coletivo Secular Games), e ele me abriu a porta para conhecer jogos indie e para a possibilidade de escrever jogos. Tenho tentado começar a participar mais das comunidades de RPG em português, vendo que a gente tem muita produção de qualidade na língua que falamos, e ela parece ter menos destaque do que merece.
Enfim, façamos jogos! õ/
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Hi, I'm Raul (@raulranma on twitter). I'm a brazilian guy, work with illustration and graphic design, and I like tabletop games a lot (narrative or otherwise).
I started playing RPGs with Primeira Aventura, a brazilian intro book for the d20 system (up to level 5), and from then on started to try and make different things to play, although I only knew the traditional RPG scene (good old "Naruto D&D" times, heheh).
As an adult, I found Dungeon World (the brazilian edition by Secular Games), and it opened me up to get to know indie games, and the possibility of writing games. I've been trying to participate more in the portuguese-speaking RPG community, seeing that we have a lot of quality production in our spoken tongue, but it may not get the recognition it deserves.
Anyway, let's make games! õ/