ParanoydStyle
Peace Among Worlds
Hi guys! Ludography is a word that basically is to games as discography is to music or bibliography to books; it's a word I myself just learned in the last 5-10 years.
From 2012 to 2017 I was co-owner, lead editor, and line developer of End Transmission Games LLC, now defunct. We published six RPGs, three of which were full-on "game lines" with sourcebooks and adventures etcetera. Some of our later games were Kickstarted and as I recall Morrus allowed us to run advertisements on this here site for a very reasonable price, which I still appreciate. I am semi-retired from professional game design, but the games I wrote are still on the market. Some of them there are hundreds of copies of from offset print-runs sitting in warehouses. Some of them have no extant inventory but are POD through DriveThru RPG and hence have infinite copies to sell. Those copies will go on selling (in theory) until the end of time, presumably. Because I like to eat food so as not to starve and my dog likes eating food even better than I do, it's in my interest to sell those copies even though I've left the job behind.
Technically, I think I should be doing the full song and dance and making an individual thread in this forum for each game I published all with extensive detail and pretty pictures spaced cunningly apart in time...but screw all that. I don't work for ETG any more. No one does; it don't exist. So I decided to keep this low key. I'll post a link to each of the games we published with a very short capsule description. If any of them seem cool to you, consider buying one. While the company that created these games no longer exists, I'm still very proud of the work I put into writing them. Sadly, NOT ALL OF OUR GAMES ARE STILL AVAILABLE ONLINE, but these ones still are.
S.P.L.I.N.T.E.R. - SPLINTER is an RPG inside an RPG. How meta is that?? Distant future Earth is a dystopian corporate plutocracy where freedoms, individual liberties, and social mobility do not exist. For real or trumped up crimes against the state, or because you're crazy enough to volunteer and put your life on the line for a VR game that could kill you, you are effectively sentenced to D&D--you get thrown into a dungeon and the masses watch as you struggle to survive. Die in the game, die in real life. Some complications: it's not actually a D&D style fantasy world or dungeon you're sent into, but rather an randomly generated dungeon of infinite size and complexity, containing randomly scattered tech levels from longbows to lasers and everything in between. The bodies inside the Splinter that your Player ports into are shape-shifting immortal demi-gods (if you ever wanted to be a were-golem or a were-lich, this is the game for you) with various abilities that rewrite reality through will alone (think Dark Cities). And--along with everyone else in the Splinter, the arena through which you're killing your way for entertainments of the Earthside masses-they have minds of their own. The virtual reality murder maze might not be so virtual after all...
The DicePunk System: Cinematic Roleplaying In The Now - Just four stats. You only need 2d6. And you can make your own skills. The DicePunk system is probably the simplest RPG on the market that still feels like a "proper RPG", and not like a guided exercise in collaborative storytelling or an exquisite corpse. It's specifically designed for action-packed pulp, adventure, and crime stories set on Earth in more or less the modern day. It's the basis for the "Real World" rules in SPLINTER, and for the games listed below (all of those contain the DicePunk System you do NOT need to buy it separately). There was an online SRD but the downfall of the company lead to it being wiped.
The Singularity System - Buffet Style Hard Sci-Fi with in-depth tactical vehicular combat and strategically rich collaborative spaceship battles. Setting neutral. Choose the add-ons you want a la carte depending on the science fiction universe you're building. Inspired by Traveller, mechanically similar to a streamlined version of Shadowrun 4th Edition++.
Alright, that's most (not quite all) of the games that we published that are still available online. Thank you for taking a moment out of your busy day to peruse ludography.
From 2012 to 2017 I was co-owner, lead editor, and line developer of End Transmission Games LLC, now defunct. We published six RPGs, three of which were full-on "game lines" with sourcebooks and adventures etcetera. Some of our later games were Kickstarted and as I recall Morrus allowed us to run advertisements on this here site for a very reasonable price, which I still appreciate. I am semi-retired from professional game design, but the games I wrote are still on the market. Some of them there are hundreds of copies of from offset print-runs sitting in warehouses. Some of them have no extant inventory but are POD through DriveThru RPG and hence have infinite copies to sell. Those copies will go on selling (in theory) until the end of time, presumably. Because I like to eat food so as not to starve and my dog likes eating food even better than I do, it's in my interest to sell those copies even though I've left the job behind.
Technically, I think I should be doing the full song and dance and making an individual thread in this forum for each game I published all with extensive detail and pretty pictures spaced cunningly apart in time...but screw all that. I don't work for ETG any more. No one does; it don't exist. So I decided to keep this low key. I'll post a link to each of the games we published with a very short capsule description. If any of them seem cool to you, consider buying one. While the company that created these games no longer exists, I'm still very proud of the work I put into writing them. Sadly, NOT ALL OF OUR GAMES ARE STILL AVAILABLE ONLINE, but these ones still are.
S.P.L.I.N.T.E.R. - SPLINTER is an RPG inside an RPG. How meta is that?? Distant future Earth is a dystopian corporate plutocracy where freedoms, individual liberties, and social mobility do not exist. For real or trumped up crimes against the state, or because you're crazy enough to volunteer and put your life on the line for a VR game that could kill you, you are effectively sentenced to D&D--you get thrown into a dungeon and the masses watch as you struggle to survive. Die in the game, die in real life. Some complications: it's not actually a D&D style fantasy world or dungeon you're sent into, but rather an randomly generated dungeon of infinite size and complexity, containing randomly scattered tech levels from longbows to lasers and everything in between. The bodies inside the Splinter that your Player ports into are shape-shifting immortal demi-gods (if you ever wanted to be a were-golem or a were-lich, this is the game for you) with various abilities that rewrite reality through will alone (think Dark Cities). And--along with everyone else in the Splinter, the arena through which you're killing your way for entertainments of the Earthside masses-they have minds of their own. The virtual reality murder maze might not be so virtual after all...
- Sometimes Little Wondrous Things is, I am pretty sure, the biggest catalog of treasure ever published for any RPG.
- Ugly Things adds a couple hundred more monsters of all Ascension Levels to the small bestiary in the SPLINTER core rulebook, and is brimming with bizarre, bemusing, fascinating, deadly, and downright terrifying beings to encounter in the infinite vastness of the SPLINTER.
- QSR - Quick Start Rules. FREE. Includes a sample adventure and slightly simplified rules. See if SPLINTER is something you might be interested. FREE. Also includes probably my favorite piece of short fiction I've ever written. AGAIN: FREE.
The DicePunk System: Cinematic Roleplaying In The Now - Just four stats. You only need 2d6. And you can make your own skills. The DicePunk system is probably the simplest RPG on the market that still feels like a "proper RPG", and not like a guided exercise in collaborative storytelling or an exquisite corpse. It's specifically designed for action-packed pulp, adventure, and crime stories set on Earth in more or less the modern day. It's the basis for the "Real World" rules in SPLINTER, and for the games listed below (all of those contain the DicePunk System you do NOT need to buy it separately). There was an online SRD but the downfall of the company lead to it being wiped.
- Psionics. - Our best-selling, best-looking, best-known game. In Psionics, you play as Espers, troubled youths whose enormous psychic powers are about to violently awaken. As you grow into your power, you will wield mind-blowing psi talents like telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, and mind control to push back, hard, against parents, teachers, peers, and the system that has pushed you around and held you down. Six sinister Conspiracies lurk in the shadows of a world that is superficially identical to our own. When they become aware of your existence, they will come after you, seeking to bend your will and your power to their own hidden agendas of world domination.
The Singularity System - Buffet Style Hard Sci-Fi with in-depth tactical vehicular combat and strategically rich collaborative spaceship battles. Setting neutral. Choose the add-ons you want a la carte depending on the science fiction universe you're building. Inspired by Traveller, mechanically similar to a streamlined version of Shadowrun 4th Edition++.
- Biotech - Your cyberware rules, sir.
- Mind Games - Your psi power rules, ma'am.
- Firefight - For those who feel, quite rightly, that they need more options for weapons, armor, and combat maneuvers.
- Infowar - And here you'll find your in-depth rules for things like hacking cyber-systems, augmented reality, tactical networks, and so on. Please do not confuse with that show with that crazy man on it. That's called InfoWars.
- Epic Space Battles - More pew-pew laser beams! The core rulebook had a serious problem in that Starship combats slowed to a crawl once there were more than 2-4 ships. This provides alternate large scale ship-to-ship combat rules that let you resolve a fleet-scale battle in an hour. Nominated for the Best Free Product ENnie in 2016.
Alright, that's most (not quite all) of the games that we published that are still available online. Thank you for taking a moment out of your busy day to peruse ludography.
