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Benjamin Gray

7 days ago

Now What? Well, I'll Tell You Now What

Hey there. Thank you to everyone who pledged or followed Galleons of the Thunderosa, even though we didn't fund. Failing to fund was... tough. Especially since every other c...

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PROJECT UPDATE

Benjamin Gray

CREATOR

7 days ago

Project Update: Now What? Well, I'll Tell You Now What

Hey there. Thank you to everyone who pledged or followed Galleons of the Thunderosa, even though we didn't fund.

Failing to fund was... tough. Especially since every other crowdfunding project I've run successfully funded.

So I moped a bit. Went and looked at an ocean. Tried to draft a version of this update that didn't sound like that sad sack thing Hillary Clinton wrote about curling up with her dogs and never leaving the house again. And then I decided to do three pretty cool things:

I finished the basic version of Galleons of the Thunderosa! I just couldn't bear to let SKETCH's great cover art go to waste. It doesn't have the extra cool stuff I was planning, like custom subclasses, but it's a decent little game that can work 99 percent standalone or plugged into your TTRPG of choice (though it was built with D&D in mind). You can purchase the PDF on my itch.io store for $2, more than half off the crowdfunding price.
I made my first and favorite game, It Takes This Long, totally free to download. I think The People like FLOPS more (the TTRPG about remaking the movies that let you down), but I love It Takes This Long. It's a two-player game about estranged people (lovers, siblings, friends, etc.) who find themselves stranded together on a mysterious deserted island. You slowly uncover The Event that came between you and make tough decisions on whether to focus on repairing your relationship or survive the island. And, you roll on tables to see what crazy thing shows up on the island! Dinosaurs! Unexploded nuclear bomb! Stuff like that! You resolve actions by playing cup pong (beer pong without beer, though nobody is stopping you from having beer) or by rolling 2d6. People ask me if it's good for a date night! And the answer is mostly yes... but it's also possible your characters will murder each other.
I made an ashcan version of a new, totally original TTRPG called Gunpointing, based around dramatically holding people at gunpoint. Ashcan games are prototypes of games that need some playtesting and tweaking and don't have stuff like elegant prefaces and pretty layout yet and assume you have some experience with roleplaying games, but are otherwise fully playable games. It's kindof like the Steam Early Access version of a TTRPG. And it's free! Some highlights:

Game aesthetically based around handguns, a weapon anyone can use. Much of the power of a handgun is the promise of violence. The vibes are built around the trope of holding someone at gunpoint to get what you want.
Players resolve actions by playing from a hand of standard playing cards against the GM and each other. The only way to get more cards is to run out, forcing everyone to decide whether to save or play good cards and bad cards.
Stat-less system. Characters are made by selecting feats from a list, each with pros and cons. When leveling up, players choose to add a new feat or erase the con from a feat. Characters level up when they check enough boxes on a video-game-style achievement list.
Card plays are buffed or nerfed by a spectrum/hierarchy of advantages and disadvantages (play two cards and add/subtract them, see other player/GM’s cards before playing your own, etc.)
Generally, being shot is lethal. Characters can survive one “winging” from gun combat in their entire life.
Characters can also Gunpoint. If they succeed on a gunpointing play, they have the option to lethally shoot the character they are pointing a gun at with 100% success rate and top action priority at any time until the Gunpoint ends, whether by Gunpointer choice or by outside influence (view obscured, Gunpointed calls the Gunpointer’s bluff and leaves line-of-sight, etc.).
Also rules for hand-to-hand combat, chases, clocks, investigations, and more.

If you play any of these games, I want to hear about it! You can find me on Bluesky, mostly, as @imbenvincible.bsky.social or you can listen to Roleplay Retcon, the actual play podcast where we remake infamous flop movies with TTRPGs! Thank you again for supporting me!

--Benjamin Gray

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Benjamin Gray

CREATOR

about 2 months ago

Victory Lap #3: We Get Paid!

Most of the money from this campaign goes to artists and printing, but if we hit $2000 I'll be able to make a little money off of this and shoot a few bucks to some people who helped out!

Goal: $305 / $2,000

15%

We need $1,695 more to reach this goal.