Kai's guide to #RPGSEA games and creators!

So a while back I posted about Paul Czege's quote on indie RPGs on itch.io, back in this thread:

The itch.io pen-and-paper scene is getting more attention these days - for example, in this great overview by Caitlin Galiz-Rowe on Dicebreaker. Indie video game platform Itch.io has given tabletop RPG designers a new way to thrive

I'm going to be posting about my fellow #RPGSEA creators and their games in this thread, because these are awesome creative folks that I think deserve some love, and some attention. We'll start by saying that #RPGSEA is the hashtag for tabletop creators from Southeast Asia (SEA) - the whole boisterous bunch in the Philippines, my local Malaysian ttrpg design scene, but also creators in Singapore, Indonesia and all over the region. #RPGSEA also covers creators of Southeast Asian descent in the worldwide diaspora, bringing their own personal perspectives and takes on SEA culture and roleplaying in general!

I've put together a collection page of #RPGSEA games that I vouch for on itch.io, which you can check out here.

Later on, I'm gonna be doing individual focus posts.

Nice to see you repping your peeps. I look forward to seeing what's going on halfway around the world.

Starting in the Philippines, let's look at the work of BJ Recio of Buko Juice Games. BJ writes about Filipino-inspired gods and monsters for use in tabletop RPGs. Perhaps you've seen his name on the writing team for The Islands of Sina Una, a successfully crowdfunded setting book for D&D 5e based on the pre-colonial Philippines.

His system-agnostic adventure Cockamania! is a quirky and charming mystery set in a rice-farming village where local gods and spirits are locked in a nasty web of ambition, grudges, curses and stolen poultry, all of which swirls around the seasonal cockfights staged by the villagers. If you ever wanted to see what happens when you enter a cockatrice into a cockfight, this is the adventure for you. There are also two traditional chicken recipes for the reader to try.

BJ also helped create the viral #ManilaEncounters tag on Twitter last year, which generated a huge amount of urban fantasy microfiction from Manila's residents. He's edited the best of these, with permission of the authors, into a zine, Manila Encounters Vol. 1, which also includes additional art and essays. There are plenty of great adventure seeds for a Manila-based urban fantasy game right here.

His Patreon can be found at:

Malaysian game designer Aaron Lim has established a clear brand, and that brand is all about strong thematic elements and clever wordplay.

From the micro-game that first brought him to my attention, Baby's First RPG, to the Oaths of Virtue that govern the warriors of The Oaths We Swore Amid Autumn Leaves, Aaron's games are always distinct, focused and memorable.

Sometimes Aaron's puns aren't just textual; in The Outer Whorls, the players make a map of connected Worlds by each dipping a finger in ink and marking their fingerprint on the Galaxy map! What's more, every time two players' Worlds attempt to make a Connection, the simultaneous-choice mechanic is played out by having the players choose one of their five fingers to point (there are different meanings listed on a handy table). That's the kind of design that shows true commitment to wordplay - and it isn't even Aaron's first game to use finger-based mechanics!

I could go on and on about Aaron's very specific and very gimmicky designs. His game about an online community of gunpla collectors. His extremely Malaysian schoolkid superhero game. His game about the different phases in the life of a wuxia swordfighter (and also heavily themed around the number 4, which has grim connotations in Chinese culture).

But if you have any interest in lyric games, read Homebound. It's an anthology of games about home and going away, inspired by his experiences as an immigrant, as part of the Melbourne game design scene, and as someone who returned to Malaysia. It is heartfelt, artfully written, and deeply personal.

Natum Go is a character designer from Indonesia who highlights Asian characters, stories and themes through their artwork. And they design RPG material too!

Their D&D 5e Sorcerous Origin, Ancient Curse, is a particularly clever twist on the folk tales of ancestral curses that ensure certain doom. This sorcerer subclass draws power from the curse they were born with to try to thwart fate. The Cursed Self feature manages to be both a curse and a blessing on the first attack roll, ability check and saving throw rolled each day, and there is a plethora of curse-themed powers that the sorcerer gains as it goes up the levels (including access to a limited number of warlock spells). It doesn't seem overpowered or underpowered, and is dripping with flavour. Best of all, there are two versions of the file, one with designer's notes (for optimization of play) and one without (for hardcore players I guess).

Their single-player introspection game, You Hold The Thread, is about examining choices made in the past and thinking about alternative events that could have resulted from different choices. It works particularly well if you have diary entries or old social media posts to reference. I particularly like how there is a strict time limit on reviewing and thinking about those choices...after which you destroy or delete your notes, because while learning about the importance of past decisions is good, dwelling too long on the past is bad. Well thought-out.

You can find their artwork for their homebrew D&D campaign here. Now, somebody go hire them!

That artwork is solid.

First of all, kudos to Malaysian creator Aaron Lim for being nominated in TWO categories of the Freeplay Awards 2020, for The Outer Whorls and Homebound!

https://www.freeplay.net.au/awards/

Next, our #RPGSEA creator spotlight shifts to the Philippines where we look at the design work of "Pammu" Punzalan, community organizer and co-founder/Editor-in-Chief of gaming site Play Without Apology (known for years before that as Girls Got Game until a big corporation branded the phrase).


Pam has worked on games both big and small. Sundo is her game of death, rebirth, memories, and letting go, loosely based on the Powered by the Apocalypse framework. The First Edition is available for Pay-What-You-Want; a second edition is now in Beta.


Among her smaller games - which cover topics like trashy writing, monsters going clubbing at night, and taxi drivers ferrying spirits about Manila - I'm particularly fond of Our Armistice, a two-player romance game about a soldier returning home to a loved one. It's lavishly illustrated with public-domain art from classic Filipino painters.


Also check out Pammu's homebrews for Forged in the Dark, including Waking the Dead, a local Filipino take on the World of Darkness and One More Notch, which combines North Hook from Blades in the Dark with the Grishaverse novels of Leigh Bardugo.


Pam's Ko-Fi:


Pam's Patreon:

Okay, we have to talk about my friend Jammi Nedjadi of Sword Queen Games. Professional tarot reader (20 years experience) and game designer (writing, layout and other magic). From the Philippines.

Jammi is an industry. They started publishing on itch the same time I did at the start of 2019.

I have published 5 things (3 small games and 2 tiny supplements) since that time.

Jammi has published 38. THIRTY-EIGHT.

Not shovelware. Not a bunch of one-pagers (although one-pagers are nothing to sniff at, just look at Grant Howitt). Twenty-plus gorgeous premium games of various size, eight free games (not necessarily short!) and various prototypes and experimental projects.

Gorgeous games.

This is what their free stuff looks like.


This is what their paid stuff looks like.


What are Jammi games about? Emotions and memories and also big magic and robots blowing up. They love creating roleplaying experiences in the science fiction and cyberpunk genres, but also ghost stories, anime fantasies and Vertigo Comic supernatural conspiracy stuff.

I recommend you take a look at their pay-what-you-want game Stories of Love in Manila. It's a storytelling game for 2-6 people set in a coffee shop somewhere in the big city of Manila. One is a gifted fortune teller, the Reader. The others are Elementals: spirits and creatures from Filipino folklore living in the guise of humans, working and dreaming in the city, coming to the Reader with their troubled love lives. It's tarot-driven, it's got romance and urban fantasy and flashbacks and flashforwards. All classic Jammi themes.


BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home, one of Jammi's best premium games, is also about Elementals, but in a cyberpunk dystopia where the spirits rebel against a powerful Corporate overlord. It's built on Avery Alder's Belonging Outside Belonging framework, and can be played with or without a GM. BALIKBAYAN is part of the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, so if you have that, take a look at Jammi's game!


Once More Into The Void, a Firebrands hack, is Jammi's ode to Mass Effect 2, about a Captain who must find redemption for the past, while gathering up their old crew for one last mission to save the galaxy.


Jammi is also an active member of The Gauntlet RPG community, and frequently streams games as well as serving as a host on the Gauntlet Podcast.



And if you've heard of the Role RPG platform Kickstarter, Jammi is one of the six exciting indie creators who are being paid to create new games and supplements for the Role Marketplace! Their contribution is a space opera about a sundered galaxy called Voidwalkers! As of writing, there are 3 days remaining to back Role...


Finally, you can follow Sword Queen Games on this Patreon account:

Bonus video: Here's an actual play of Jammi's solo Sword Dream adventure into Filipino mythology, We Forest Three, featuring me getting attacked by a kapre's monstrous banana.

Time for a bit of self-promotion. I'm a Malaysian creator and part of #RPGSEA too. So is Elisha, my partner in creative crime. Together with our cats, we are Role Over Play Dead - which is also the name of our blog.



In 2019 we joined the Emotional Mecha Jam on itch.io and published Ech0, a GM-less map-making game where you collectively tell the story of a dead mech pilot, as children explore an ancient battlefield and discover what remains. It's our bestselling game (and part of the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, if you bought that).


That was the start of our journey as game creators.

We've gone on to work on some small supplements for various games like Troika! But our biggest ongoing project is Pipedream, a Cthulhu Dark hack about halfling detectives with magical pipeweed who will solve cases, die horribly, and/or get high.


We're out to promote roleplaying by Malaysians, and to create really interesting RPG content, and you can find our Ko-Fi and Patreon here:



Okay, end of self-promotion, we'll get back to the rest of #RPGSEA soon. Next stop: Singapore!