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HopperUK posted:I've been playing Apothecaria by Anna Blackwell and it's really lovely. A journalling game where you are a village witch, curing people of ailments both minor and major. You have to seek out reagents that match the tags on their ailment, and have tiny adventures in different locations. I'm saving up for a beehive because people will pay more for potions that taste nice. Gotta get that honey money. I am really liking Apothecaria too.  I also dipped my toes into her dungeon map-making game Delve and utterly devastated my dwarven hold within ten turns.
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Aug 18, 2021 21:43
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HopperUK posted:Yeah, my Delve dungeon did not go so hot. I'm gonna take a good run at Umbra I think, and sort of fudge the book-keeping cuz I don't want to do combat in that game, I just wanna draw map. I actually haven't given myself one yet, I'm still only a few weeks into spring and I want to ease into the setting. Kind of just waiting for inspiration to strike. In my "trial run" experimentation that I didn't commit to canon, my first patient was a baby gryphon who wrecked up my cottage while I was away gathering ingredients. I thought maybe I'd develop that into a recurring character I could eventually befriend into a familiar. I bought the Delve PDF originally when I was just checking out the author's works, then sprung for the full deluxe option of all her games in print for the kickstarter. But that shipping has been delayed because I bundled it with the zoology sourcebook from her partner, so now I'm sitting on my thumbs waiting to try out Umbra and Rise. e: whoops, just looked at backerkit and it turns out I got all three as a digital download! Guess it's time to check those out. wizzardstaff fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Aug 19, 2021 |
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Aug 19, 2021 00:04
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Ragnar34 posted:For Apothecaria, how much of the magic is lost if I journal into a laptop? I can't handwrite for that long. Plenty of people seem to like it. On the discord channel for the game (linked from the itch.io page) there are folks sharing links to their witch blogs. Also a lot more pretty paper journal pics.
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Aug 21, 2021 16:12
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Lol, my friend just sent me that joke and the game link because I've been going on about Apothecaria so much. (He fits the description in the other tweet, PISSBARF THE BARBARIAN or whatever.)
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Aug 25, 2021 02:28
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Maybe a little lighter in tone than Wreck This Deck calls for, but Everyday Sigils by Helvetica Blanc might also be some inspiration.
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Aug 26, 2021 00:09
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 I love the scrapbook format
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Sep 8, 2021 03:49
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Maybe Hedgehog is diversifying their portfolio into scarves and hats?
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Sep 8, 2021 16:40
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I just came across Scraps by Cezar Capacle and it looks like an interesting counterpart to Apothecaria. It's another "feel-good crafting game" but set in a solarpunk post-apocalypse. You set out on expeditions to find materials for personal and community building projects, which are supposed to be symbiotic with the environment and not colonial or imperialistic. Hard to see the exact mechanics from the preview but it looks like there's some sort of Tetris-like inventory management representing your construction. I think I'll definitely check this out; anyone else played it already? Edit: got the PDF and skimmed through it. Looks decent, though it may be a little annoying to play on paper since a big part of the game is flipping, rotating, and otherwise transforming specific shapes on a grid. There is also a worldbuilding component where you map/explore the hexes surrounding your settlement to find special ingredients. The game has a very specific explore-collect-craft loop but the output of that loop feels kind of half-hearted; your projects are worth "points" when completed but there's nothing to use those points on except to "spend" them on narrative experiences, and the only guidance on spending is to just "put 10-20 points into something depending on how much you care about it." The initial comparison to Apothecaria feels very apt: whereas that game has very specific events and outcomes while you're gathering ingredients and zero rules for how to craft them together, this game's exploration is much more open-ended and the crafting is tightly defined. Might be interesting to mash the two together somehow. wizzardstaff fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Sep 9, 2021 |
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Sep 9, 2021 20:51
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HopperUK posted:That's really interesting! Looks a bit too fiddly for my taste, but please report back if you try running through it a bit. I haven't dug into it yet, but the designer has been live tweeting a playthrough in this thread all day. https://twitter.com/capacle/status/1437052882948341763
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Sep 13, 2021 03:17
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I played a round of 12 Years by Max Moon this morning. It's a solo exploration/dungeoneering game where you assemble a party and lead them into certain death as you try to stop the Lich King from rising to power. You explore around until you find a crown, which you must then bring to the Lich King's castle to complete his coronation ritual and appease him for another 12 years of slumber. I got lucky in my game by stumbling across a crown in the first room of my very first dungeon and encountered very few enemies on my way to the castle, meaning I was able to plow through the Lich King's guards and coronate him on my first lucky roll by avoiding his touch of instant death. That should give you an impression of how swingy the game is: extremely lethally random...or not. Most of the complexity of the game is found in its random tables and its mechanics mostly boil down to deciding when and how to push your luck. I think it would lend itself very well to a digital implementation as a casual mobile game that you complete in five minutes on your phone, but that would remove much of the flavorful appeal of writing backstories, designing dungeon layouts, etc.  World map (created in Hex Kit)  Lich King's dungeon and throne room (created in Dungeon Scrawl)
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Dec 20, 2021 20:51
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I think Rise and Umbra have a rule to basically give you a chance to build up, or maybe it was a tweak in errata or on patreon. It's something they need, unfortunately. The designer does a ton of tinkering and expansion-building on patreon and discord, I think is is her nature to release stuff and iterate on it. Primarily her first rule is always “if it’s not fun, you can play it how you want.” But that does result in a potentially unsatisfying time for people who want to run a tightly tweaked experience out of the box.
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Mar 16, 2022 18:05
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HopperUK posted:I'm still trying to land on the best solo world-building game. I want to take a proper run at Ex Novo and also The Quiet Year which can both easily be played solo. Anyone got recs? I do enjoy Penciltown but it's a tiny bit too book-keepy for me, I'd rather something more narrative, but that still ends up with a cool map.
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Mar 20, 2022 16:36
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I'm so conflicted on Apawthecaria. I really, really like Apothecaria for its theme but wish it had a little more mechanical crunch. Apawthecaria looks like it addresses this perfectly but the Redwall-esque theme, while adorable, is just not doing it for me. Maybe I'll take the plunge but I wish I didn't have to choose.
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Jun 22, 2022 15:24
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HopperUK posted:I don't think it'd be all that hard to lift the mechanics you want out and back into Apothecaria. I've thought about it, but it's more work to hack them together than I'm willing to commit to. For example one of my favorite aspects of the animal game is how your foraging location is determined by the travel map, while the witch game is all about building up a cozy home base. There's not a straight one-to-one port between them. Similarly, I like the seasonal events in the animal game but there's no equivalent in the witch game, I'd have to write my own prompts. And if I'm doing that then I'm playing narrative calvinball anyway, which is what I wanted to get away from. What I might do is play Apawthecaria by the book but straight-up reskin it on the fly to be the story of a wandering human healer. Convert every prompt that references anthropomorphic animals into something else. It would not be the same vibe as Apothecaria and would miss out on all the unique text from that game, but it could be its own thing.
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Jun 22, 2022 23:18
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One of the cool things about Apawthecaria that doesn't have a direct relationship to Apothecaria are all the references to behemoths (large animals) and titan relics (human remnants). I think it could be fun to scale those up into terrifying fantasy/alien creatures and magitech ruins.
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Jun 22, 2022 23:48
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Doctor Zero posted:In checking out Apawthecaria, I see the author started with DELVE which is Dwarf Fortress inspired. Take a look and see if this inspires you. You can also check out the discord where people post some really great maps and playthroughs. https://youtu.be/egU3-sPmFUw I have only played one game of Delve myself, being intimidated by my lovely illustration skills. But that shouldn't be a barrier as there are people who play with Excel spreadsheets and no art at all. My impression of Delve (and the others in its line, Rise and Umbra) is that it's a great story generator but somewhat flawed as a tightly balanced game. The first rules question anyone has is "wait, so if I build a drawbridge over a volcanic shaft, have I just solved the game?" And the next is "why are prisons so overpowered, if I fill my hold with conscripted labor then it's easy mode." The author's response is basically "yup" with a side of "if you don't like it, make up your own rules that are more fun". She's a tinkerer and prefers to add new mechanisms and explorations to her games rather than linger and refine existing stuff. Much of her flavor is fascinating and clever but only skin deep when it comes to the crunch. Which is totally cool! Just maybe hold up if you are expecting "literally dwarf fortress on paper". All that being said, the game is taking off in popularity lately (largely because of the video above) and I think she's considering a revised second edition.
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Jun 23, 2022 17:31
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How is that? Worth getting?
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The deadline got extended. I slapped together something for the original date of November 11, and now I see that submissions are still open.
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Nov 13, 2022 04:03
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HopperUK posted:Delve, Rise and-- Umbra I think, are Anna Blackwell's trilogy of base building games and I really like them. Actually everything she's written is great. I'm really looking forward to the upcoming game inspired by Becky Chambers' books.
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Jun 11, 2023 23:43
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girl dick energy posted:Does anyone else have any experience with making their own solo RPG systems? I've got some ideas bouncing around in my head, but I'd love to know if there's any common mistakes or pitfalls that new designers tend to fall into. Do I have experience? Yes, in that I made one and am drafting others. Am I self-aware enough to label common mistakes and pitfalls? Debatable. I would say a big hurdle when writing prompts is finding the right balance between vague and specific. You don't want to write the whole story for your player in advance, but you want to do more than give them a vague notion to write about. I forget where it comes from (maybe this thread) but there's some joke about journaling games being just "you are a patron in a tea shop. Write about the other customers. You may cry if you wish." If you are writing a more crunchy system, walk through the core mechanical loop of the game without all the narrative bits. Is it frustratingly repetitive to roll so many dice or shuffle so many cards? Do you feel like you're actually playing a game with interesting outcomes or just a dressed up version of flipping a coin?
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Jun 12, 2023 16:27
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My bucket list includes hacking together an Apothecaria/Scraps mashup. I love how they feel so complementary. Apothecaria is very regimented and precise about gathering the right ingredients for your potions while having nothing to say at all about the act of brewing them, while Scraps has a whole unique mechanical system for crafting but kind of abstracts away the foraging/gathering elements.
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Jun 19, 2023 15:10
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feverish and oversexed posted:I've spent more time collecting, reading, analyzing, and brainstorming all these rpgs than actually playing them lmao I love Apothecaria. I regularly pitch it to friends. I have every expansion. I'm active on the Blackwell Games discord where I discuss rules and procedures. I wrote an app to assist gameplay. I have yet to finish a full game with my character, who I haven't written about in eight months.
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Jun 22, 2023 08:07
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You're excited to start a new game. Which of your pristinely beautiful empty journals will you despoil? How long will you play the game before you abandon it and render the remaining blank pages utterly unusable?
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Jun 29, 2023 16:02
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girl dick energy posted:I've been thinking about doing Delve but using the rather hilarious stock of pixel art assets I've gotten from itch.io and the like over the years, rather than drawing. Would anyone be interested in seeing the results?
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Jul 18, 2023 04:17
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StrixNebulosa posted:so I backed a kickstarter for a new solo rpg (tabletop/journaling) by the lady who did Apothecaria and... holy poo poo this is way more than I expected omg
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Dec 21, 2023 16:05
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How much of the narrative are you interested in providing yourself? If you want something like a premade scenario or campaign to explore by yourself, I'm not sure solo RPGs will scratch that itch. The crunchiest one I can think of is Ironsworn and even that still requires you to bring a lot of narrative to the table. Have you also looked into board games (like Gloomhaven) or classic gamebooks (like Fighting Fantasy)?
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Mar 1, 2024 03:50
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The OP has Delve but I would also strongly recommend Apothecaria by the same creator. If you need a blurb: Apothecaria is a journaling game about being a novice witch in a cozy fantasy setting. You search for potion ingredients across different locales, encountering events and inhabitants along the way. The author Anna Blackwell is actively supporting the game with regular expansions featuring new exploration areas and crafting opportunities. https://blackwellwriter.itch.io/apothecaria Goonmade self plug: I made a companion game called Patchwork Potions which works as an expansion for Apothecaria or a light standalone game. It gives you prompts that dovetail with Apothecaria as you gradually fill out a patchwork grid of colors representing your own story's themes. I was going to kickstart it for zinequest 2023 but fell into a deep hole of self-promotion apathy and just threw it in a big itch.io bundle to support trans rights. https://bespoketacle.itch.io/patchwork-potions
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Mar 21, 2024 18:53
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Whoever it was that was looking for a solo RPG system that would be like playing a D&D campaign by themself, I thought of you when Facebook served me up an ad for this kickstarter. Looks like a 5E-compatible Choose Your Own Adventure book directly descended from classic gamebooks. I've never heard of the publisher Archmage Press and they appear to have zero web presence outside of a very enthusiastic Facebook page, but there is full adventure available for preview here: https://kickstarter.archmagepress.com/thankyou/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/archmagepress/domain-of-the-deathless-king
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Mar 24, 2024 10:20
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Sweaters For Scumfuck, featuring a d666 table of critical hit effects for knitting needles
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Mar 24, 2024 18:12
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 That sounds extremely like my kind of poo poo, thank you for sharing
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May 6, 2024 23:39
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