Ludonarrative Dissidents

Traveller is a science fiction roleplaying game of bold explorers and brave adventurers. The Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022 contains everything you need to create one of these adventures and begin exploring the galaxy.

Spaceports, ancient civilisations, air/rafts, cold steel blades, laser carbines, far distant worlds, and exotic alien beasts – this is the futuristic universe of Traveller, the original and classic science fiction roleplaying game.

Get full show notes at our website!

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Experience Points are a common game mechanic in tabletop role playing games, but what are they? From Dungeons and Dragons to the World of Darkness, a wide variety of games use experience points to measure character progression and improvement. We discuss how these mechanics affect play and brainstorm ideas for alternative progression systems.

Check out The Night Clerk, a RPG scenario zine, written by Ross Payton, now on Backerkit!

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Fiasco is an award-winning, GM-less game for 3-5 players, designed to be played in a few hours with no preparation. During a game you engineer and play out stupid, disastrous situations, usually at the intersection of greed, fear, and lust. It’s like making your own Coen brothers movie, in about the same amount of time it’d take to watch one. Tell cinematic tales of small time capers gone disastrously wrong – inspired by films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan. You play ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control.

Listen to an actual play of Fiasco 2E guest starring Caleb Stokes, author of Red Markets!

Get full show notes on our website!

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Diceless RPGs are games that do not use dice to randomize game elements. Many of these games do not have any randomization elements and include games like Amber, Pantheon, and Marvel Universe. Others use randomizers like shuffled cards or spinners. We discuss these systems and how they affect game play and storytelling.

Check out the LND website for links to games and more!

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The landscape was full of machines and scrap metal connected to the facility in one way or another. Always present on the horizon were the colossal cooling towers, with their green obstruction lights. If you put your ear to the ground, you could hear the heartbeat of the Loop – the purring of the Gravitron, the central piece of engineering magic that was the focus of the Loop’s experiments. The facility was the largest of its kind in the world, and it was said that its forces could bend space-time itself. Scifi artist Simon Stålenhag’s paintings of Swedish 1980s suburbia, populated by fantastic machines and strange beasts, have won global acclaim. Now, you can step into the amazing world of the Loop.

Show notes for Season 2 are on the LND website.

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Dread is a game of horror and hope. Those who play will participate in a mutual telling of an original macabre tale. The goal of Dread is to sustain the delicate atmosphere that invokes the hand quivering emotion that lends its name to the game. The thrill of a Dread game lies within the tension between desire and loss. Players take on the role of someone trapped in a story that is only as compelling as it is hostile.

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Planet Mercenary RPG is a space opera adventure game based on the popular web comic Schlock Mercenary. It contains everything you need to create characters, equip them, and load them onto warships for adventures across the galaxy. Build your own mercenary company and accept all the best contracts. Rescue ecotourists from Eina Afa’s Stormring Sea. Leap between the Pereri Ring’s tethered asteroids in pursuit of pirates. Brave the dark heart of Ellwor’s mechorganic jungle in search of the Greater Meatsnatch. Engineered for speed and simplicity, the Planet Mercenary RPG lets you play out these adventures quickly with three six-sided dice and the 108-card Mayhem deck—a set of story-building, plot-twisting, occasionally explosive elements that can transform even a mundane encounter into a turning point for the entire mission. You and your group will weave magnificent, raucous, and probably hilarious adventure stories, and everyone will enjoy themselves …even when things go terribly wrong.

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Call of Cthulhu is the world’s best game of secrets, mysteries, and horror, first published in 1981 and now in its seventh edition. Playing the role of steadfast investigators, you travel to strange and dangerous places, uncover foul plots, and stand against the terrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. You encounter sanity-blasting entities, monsters, and insane cultists. Within strange and forgotten tomes of lore you discover revelations that humanity was not meant to know.

If you want to discuss the episode, join our community Discord! 

Initiative systems are an important but often overlooked element in role playing games. They determine who can act and when. They allocate spotlight time for players and influences the action economy of a game. We talk about different ways of determining initiative and if you even need them.

Eclipse Phase is the  post-apocalyptic game of transhuman horror. Humanity is enhanced  and  improved, but also battered and bitterly divided. Technology allows  the  re-shaping of bodies and minds, but also creates opportunities for   oppression and puts the capability for mass destruction in the hands of   everyone. And other threats lurk in the devastated habitats of the  Fall,  dangers both familiar and alien. In this harsh setting, the  players  participate in a cross-faction conspiracy called Firewall that  seeks to  protect transhumanity from threats both internal and external.

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MÖRK  BORG is a pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy RPG about lost souls and  fools seeking redemption, forgiveness or the last remaining riches in a  bleak and dying world. Who are you? The tomb-robber with silver  glittering between cracked fingernails? The mystic who would bend the  world’s heart away from it’s inevitable end? Confront power-draining  necromancers, skulking skeletal warriors and backstabbing wickheads.  Wander the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, the catacombs beneath the  Bergen Chrypt or the bedevilled Sarkash forest. But leave hope behind –  the world’s cruel fate is sealed, and all your vain heroic efforts are  destined to end in death and dismay. It was created by Pelle Nilsson and  Johan Nohr.

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The Laundry Files Roleplaying Game is based on the best-selling  novels by Charles Stross. In the game, you play officers of the Laundry,  that eccentric and underfunded agency dedicated to protecting the  United Kingdom from unthinkable horrors. The Laundry uses the Basic  Roleplaying System - the same system that powers the classic Call of  Cthulhu roleplaying game (so you can easily convert adventures from one  game to the other). As Laundry staff, you're trained to deal with the  weird and ghastly spawn of the Mythos, you're equipped with the best  equipment your committee-approved mission budget can buy, and you've got  back-up on call from the SAS. All of that means you're only  terrifyingly underprepared, as opposed to completely screwed, when the  shoggoth hits the fan.

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Meta currencies are a type of game mechanic found in tabletop role playing games. They are an abstract resource used by players to affect the narrative but do not represent something in the game except luck, fate, or willpower and so forth. Examples include fate points in Fate, willpower in Red Markets, and Resolve in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. We discuss types of mechanics and why they are used in RPGs.

Discuss this episode on our community Discord server! 

Red Markets is a tabletop RPG about economic horror. In Red Markets,  characters risk their lives trading between the massive quarantine  zones containing a zombie outbreak and the remains of civilization. They  are Takers: mercenary entrepreneurs unwilling  to accept their abandonment. Bound together into competing crews, each  seeks to profit from mankind’s near-extinction before it claims them.  They must hustle, scheme, and scam as hard as they fight if they hope to  survive the competing factions and undead hordes the GM throws at them.

Takers that are quick, clever, or brutal enough might live to see  retirement in a safe zone, but many discover too late that the cycle of  poverty proves harder to escape than the hordes of undead.

If you'd like to discuss this episode, please join our community Discord server.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition is a game set in the Old World of Warhammer Fantasy. Dating back to 1986, WFRP is a celebrated British RPG about living in a detailed setting loosely inspired by the decline of the Holy Roman Empire. Players take on the roles of common folk who have uncommon destined fates, investigating chaos cults, surviving deadly monsters, and trying to scrape by in a grim and dark world. The current edition adds new mechanics to the game while retaining much of its old system.

Coyote and Crow is a tabletop role playing game set in an alternate future of the Americas where colonization never occurred. Instead, advanced civilizations arose over hundreds of years after a massive climate disaster changed the history of the planet. You'll play as adventurers starting out in the city of Cahokia, a bustling, diverse metropolis along the Mississippi River. It's a world of science and spirituality where the future of technology and legends of the past will collide.

Many RPGs use cards in their mechanics, from playing cards to Tarot to custom decks of cards. We discuss some of these games, the types of mechanics we've seen and the history of card-based games. 

If you enjoy this episode, back our Kickstarter for Season 2 of Ludonarrative Dissidents. This podcast is only possible with the help of backers and this time we'll have a private RSS feed for early access to all episodes, plus other great rewards! 

Some of the games mentioned in this episode

• Everway
• The Mystery Creature of Claytonsville
• Whimsy cards
• Aces and Eights
• Savage Worlds
• Lace and Steel
• Upwind
• Best Friends
• The Beast
• Conspiracy X Zener cards
• The Mind 

Greg Stolze's procedurally generated game puts  you in the corrupt,  dissolute city-state of Vindamere, but don't  worry. You play the best people there, spoiled children of privilege  with nothing better to do  than pursue swordplay, flirt outrageously,  and snack on delicious  vol-au-vents. A single game session covers the  social year from Ye  Midwinter Balle through the prestigious Alle-Valley  Fencinge  Championeshippe. Your louche elite blade-swanks fall in love,  brawl,  sneer and engage in truly petty social rivalries. 

Learn more about Dueling Fops of Vindamere.

We'll have an episode zero of Season 2 on this podcast when we launch the Kickstarter. We'll be previewing a new type of episode where discuss a common type of game mechanic found in many RPGs. Which mechanic? You'll have to stay subscribed to find out. See you at the Kickstarter! 

Base Raiders is a Fate powered superhero RPG about dungeon crawling in  abandoned villain and hero bases.  Characters find super power sources  in bases or buy them from the black market. It was written by Ross  Payton and published in 2014.

Buy Base Raiders here.

Our season 1 finale, an actual play of Dueling Fops of VIndamere, is coming next week. After that, our Kickstarter for Season 2! Stay tuned! 

The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen by James Wallis is a  humorous and competitive storytelling  game of telling tall tales.  During the game, each player must tell a story,  while the other players  attempt to interject and stage interruptions or  distractions. The  player with the best story at the end of the game is  the winner.

Our next episode will look at Base Raiders, a Fate powered superhero  game about dungeon crawling in abandoned bases. After that, our final  episode for season 1 will be an actual play of Dueling Fops of  Vindamere. We hope to launch a crowdfunding campaign for season 2 this  year, so stay tuned!

Unknown Armies is a modern horror RPG  that presents magick as it might exist in a  world informed by crime  fiction and secret histories, as twisting  wrinkles in reality created  by greater and greater risk, sacrifice, and  obsession. It was created  by Greg Stolze and John Tynes.

13th Age is a d20 fantasy role playing game designed for "experienced  Gamemasters and players of all experience levels." It features several  new mechanics and character class designs unique to it, like the Icon  system and One Unique Thing. It was written by D&D designers Rob  Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet.

In Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings you chronicle the many  centuries of a vampire’s existence, beginning with the loss of mortality  and ending with inevitable destruction. Prompt-driven play and simple  resource tracking provide easy rules for exploring your character’s  human failings, villainous acts, and surprising victories.

The Quiet Year is a storytelling game from Avery Alder about map-making  and building a community after the apocalypse. "You define the struggles  of a community  living after the collapse of civilization, and attempt  to build  something good within their quiet year. Every decision and  every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising  concern."

Ars Magica is a "role playing game aboutsorcerers and their allies in  Mythic Europe." Play focuses around the covenant, a community of magi,  companions, and servants and guards (known as grogs). Players take up  multiple roles in the game, playing as all three types of characters  throughout a campaign.  A highly influential game that launched the  careers of many well-known designers, we focus primarily on the current  edition, fifth, but also talk about earlier ones.

Content warning: Bluebeard's Bride is a  "game about the terrible realities of women's lives." It discusses  sexual assault, body horror, torture, murder, suicide, and other  horrific topics. Our conversation about the game touch on these topics  as well. Thank you for your understanding.

Bluebeard's Bride is "an investigatory horror tabletop roleplaying  game based on the Bluebeard fairy tale." Players take on personality  aspects of the young bride as she explores Bluebeard's mansion, looking  for clues on Bluebeard's nature. No aspect fully controls the bride's  actions, as players take turns guiding her through the horrors of the  mansion. Will the bride be faithful or disloyal to her new husband? Only  the players decide through the course of this game.

Continuum is a role playing game about time travel. Published in 1999,  it boasts that its setting has a society of time travelers and a history  of the past and future of earth. It also has rules for 'time combat'.  Time travelers can try to kill each other by introducing paradoxes into  the timelines of their foes. Do the rules work? Greg, James, and I  discuss this infamous RPG.

Delta Green is a horror RPG based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Agents  of the secretive agency, Delta Green (which may or may not be an  illegal conspiracy inside the US government) investigate and neutralize  cosmic horror threats. Rules focus on the dangers and costs of facing  the unnatural, physically, mentally, and socially. Agents can perish in  an instant or watch their friends and families drift away as they spiral  deeper into the darkness.

Night's Black Agents is a Gumshoe system espionage vampire thriller RPG  by Ken Hite. It expands on the Gumshoe system so GMs can run  espionage-themed games ranging from cinematic action-packed adventures  to paranoid tales of intrigue.

Lancer is a sci-fi RPG focusing on tactical mecha combat in the distant  future. Featuring dozens of unique mechs with incredible powers and  weapons, Lancer is a must-play for groups who love d20 combat, teamwork,  and giant robots.

Outlaws of the Water Margin is a self-published RPG by Paul Mason based  on the Chinese historical epic novel of the same name. Set in 12th  century China, the player characters are heroic outlaws fighting a  corrupt government bureaucracy. Outlaws was never formally published but  it did cultivate a player base in the 80s and 90s. James was one of  these players and knows the author, so he provides some background  context for the game.

Special thanks to Christian Biklee, the backer who chose this game for us to review!

This episode is dedicated to Nathanael, Paul, Ben, and Jordan,  friends of Christian who played Outlaws of the Water Margin with him.

In each episode, we plan to focus on a  particular RPG, looking at its mechanics, setting, and everything else  to see what makes this game tick. In this preview episode, we look at  Apocalypse World, the RPG that launched a revolution in the indie RPG  scene. We try to answer the following questions:

1) What the game does.

2) How it does it.

3) How people play it.

4) Why people play it that way.

Blades in the Dark is a game about heists, a city of eternal night, and  more importantly, managing your stress at work. Greg dispenses some  words of wisdom about the future conditional tense.