#14: New Dice Bots & Old Podcasts
Hello! I’m “attending” Metatopia Online this year and it’s quite fun so far. Lots of panels being broadcast on twitch, including one by me! By the time, you see this, my panel will be over but there’s still Sunday’s panels left. Everything is being recorded this year so all the videos will be on Youtube at some point later.
Hope you’re having a nice weekend wherever you are.
I. The Wonderful World of Discord Dice Bots
Virtual Table Tops or VTTs like Roll20 were built by people who wanted to D&D 4e online. They wanted grids and minis and all the rest of it. If you want to play most indie RPGs online, you really just need a video chat app. None of other features really matter… But people still use it and I think it’s mostly for the - very real - pleasure in the suspense and communal joy of witnessing a dice roll together! The pain of 1. The triumph of a crit. It’s a part of the joy of play.
I never play via Roll20 but I do play a lot of play-by-post games. And through those games, I’ve come to discover that there is whole ecosystem of people making dicebots - little programs that run in discord that roll dice for you - customized for specific games. For free. Anyone can use them. If you’re used to Roll20 and have never used a dicebot, the learning curve might seem strange. You have to use these weird / signs, etc. I get it. Not trying to persuade you away from a VTT, I promise!
But say you wanted to roll Fate dice, something like Sidekick bot, can do that for you and all you really need to learn to type is “/r 4dF”. That’s it! You can also use Sidekick to do most other normal rolls like “/r 4d8” will roll 4 d8s - just like in Roll20.
Here’s a sample of more specific bots for indie games:
Apocabot: This one is designed specifically for PbtA games. It knows the moves for a whole slew of games like Apocalypse World 2e, Burned Over (AW Hackbook), Dungeon World, Masks, Monsterhearts, MotW, The Sprawl, The Veil, Uncharted Worlds, and Urban Shadows. Github Link // Website
Maddie: This one is specifically for Masks and has lookups for the rules and son on. Just type “!unleash” to Unleash Your Powers and so on! Link
Discordsworn: So this is for Ironsworn. It automatically does the comparison of 1d6 versus 2d10 that you need for every move. It can also look up Oracles and other fun stuff. Link
Blades in the Dark: This game has multiple dicebots to help play. Blades in the Dicebot will roll for you. It knows what a Resistance roll and stuff like that. Not super essential. You can just use normal dice roller. And because the Blades SRD is free, Blades in the Glossary can look up most of the rules for you. Pretty neat.
Trophy Dark or Gold: These games use dark-sided and light-sided dice as a part of their basic rolls. So they put together a dicebot that mimics that. It also looks cool - which is a major plus. Link
There are lots more out there, of course! These are just the ones I’ve used or seen being used.
If you want to skip discord, because you play over Zoom or something else. You could just use Roll For Your Party to have a common dice roller. It has “rooms” so you can see old rolls and wallow in your history of poor luck.
II. Listen of the Week
But I never said which week! Aha! (Sorry.) This weeks listen is from many, many weeks ago.
I want to highlight the archives of a show called Farrier’s Bellows. The hosts, a husband and wife duo, talk about classic indie TTRPGs like Psi*Run, InSpectres, Dogs in the Vineyard as well as more recent games like Fall of Magic. They’re both very different players and I really enjoy their often opposite perspectives. The archives are still on all your podcast carriers if you want to check it out. It’s also nice to just have in your back pocket and listen to if you’re ever going to play one of these games.
On that same note, Rich Rogers recently made old episodes of the Canon Puncture Show public. It has a series called Game Advocate where people come and gush about an indie game they like. It’s an old show so it has older games but I love the format.
I recently started a game of Shock: Social Science Fiction with my GM-less Games group and I used both these excellent sources to figure out the game.
III. Links of the Week
Articles
Maybe I’d be less down on the history of TTRPGs if we talked about HG Wells more than Gygax. Did you know he retrocloned Kriegspiel to invent hobby wargaming? (I say this with tongue-firmly-in-cheek.)
Reviews
Project Nerves is a new Youtube channel that’s making entirely indie RPG content. Here’s an audio flipthrough of Armour Astir: Advent, a PbtA anime mecha game.
Resources
If you’re looking for an easy and beautiful way to play Microscope online, this website is it.
Here’s a nice list of building plans and other resources from public domain books that you could potentially use in your modules or home games.
Someone’s created a spreadsheet that matches media franchises (TV Shows, Movies, etc) and TTRPG systems that emulate them.
Into the Odd, the rules-light system behind Electric Bastioland and Silent Titans, now has an SRD.
IV. Small Ads
This section contains sponsored links and advertisements.
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As usual, this newsletter was written by me: Thomas! I’m a real person - like, an actual one. With bones!
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