Makapatag (Gubat Banwa) got a mention in this article about indie TTRPG designers to look out for in 2022, which is great because I want to talk about another designer on this list, Jay Dragon!
Regardless of genre, style, or complexity, independent tabletop games have something for everyone. Be on the lookout for these designers in 2022.
www.cbr.com
You see, Jay is best known for diceless, GMless Belonging Outside Belonging games like Sleepaway and the KS hit Wanderhome, so why would we be talking about them in this thread?
Because of In The Time Of Monsters.
A tactical combat TTRPG about Norse heroes fighting at the end of the world.
possumcreekgames.itch.io
It was the final age — the old world was dying, and the new world was struggling to be born. Every day Ragnarok drew closer, the end of the world heralded by churning seas and raging skies. The gods grew rotten and weak, their greedy eyes sunken into rotting skulls. The great heroes were reduced to grist in the mill of war. It was the final age before all things ended, and as the world-tree rotted, everyone knew … Now is the time of monsters.
The protagonists of our story (if you could even call them that) are the greatest warriors this world has ever seen. Assassins from the underworld, god-thieves and immortal knights, elfin berserkers and the troll king beneath the mountain. In a time when violence is constant and at such a massive scale, the only way to survive is to cheat death herself
So, this game is literally about big fights in a doomed world against monsters and corrupted Norse Gods like Odin and Loki and the shambling mindless body of Thor (there's a bit of a story behind that).
It's a 60+ page exploratory draft, without layout or art, to be developed further in the future. But in the "early access" tradition of many itch.io games (like LANCER, ICON and Gubat Banwa), you can get the draft now, which has eight player classes and two dozen enemies, ranging from common warriors and beasts and trolls to valkyries and gods, up to, well, this wayward child of Loki:
So. Notice that the game, like Gubat Banwa and Electric Bastionland, does not have hit rolls. You just choose a move, point and click. It hits automatically like a Magic Missile, and you roll dice and do some arithmetic. Some addition. Maybe some multiplication. Maybe, in the case of the Midgard Serpent, you
raise a 8d6 roll to the power of 8.
Yes,
to the power of.
This game is about huge ridiculous damage numbers and abilities that rearrange the map. It's full of powers that break the rules (limited abilities to avoid damage, and turn it back on enemies, etc). Everyone has different ways of cheating death, like the renegade elf starting at negative hp and just going lower when you get hit, then using that value to boost your powers. Or the seer who reduces a hit to 1 damage. The hero who stole Thor's Hammer who can unleash lightning against everyone on the table at the same time. The troll hero who smashes you for enormous damage, then you either get flung back 3 squares or take
double damage.
It's wild and playful and kind of hilarious, and that's the point.
And that's our 4e-influenced tactical move-on-a-board RPG for today.
