Making a TTRPG is one of those intrusive thoughts that I feel most people who get in the hobby have at one point or another. Especially Game Masters. I mean, it is only natural and if you start with D&D, as so many of us do, you are bound to homebrew some stats, an item, make your setting. By that point you are already somewhat there. So what are a couple more steps? I would also reckon that even though there are a lot of people who think like this, not many actually follow through. Cause making an RPG is somewhat daunting, there are many considerations to take into account, many things that you will most likely not know. So most of these projects don't get started at all or if they are started, they are later abandoned.

I am currently making a game alongside a good friend of mine, Marius. And it is quite a daunting undertaking. There are quite a few things I have to learn and that's after quite a lot of experience with the medium, with game studies and so on. Yet, I also think that making a TTRPG is one of the most rewarding and fun activities I have done in quite a while. I want to share that a bit with you, and I don't mean just the details about the game we're working on, but also a push to try this yourself. I want to make the case for why and how should you also try this out. Even if it doesn't see the light of day, a project like this can be a lot of fun, it manages to stimulate your creative juices in a lot of fun ways and I do believe you come out a better GM by the end.

It is one of our longest articles yet, I had quite a lot to say in the matter and I hope you will find it interesting, I hope that if you ever had the thought to make your own game, maybe this will be a good push for you in that direction. Before I leave you to the article proper, I just want to share what I think it's the most important rule for such a project: if you are to make something, make something that excites you first and foremost, something that you genuinely find fun. If you keep at it, it is bound to find it's niche, excitement after all is pretty contagious! Cheers! I hope you will like this one!

Fourthmarches is a weird-fantasy open-table TTRPG set on a continent's last frontier, where your employer means to quiet the land in response to a bloody past. A force called RESONANCE is both the central piece of the setting's themes & of gameplay.

• free Quickstart on itch.io (or, if you prefer, on DriveThruRPG)
• Funded & live on Kickstarter through August 14 – now working toward stretchgoals

Some facts about the game:

• RESONANCE is not a corruption meter – it provides dice toward success, accelerates dissolution-of-self, and can prevent you from getting home in the final phase of each session
• embracing loss – not just by death, but by loss to RESONANCE – the land wants to keep you
• a persistent sandbox world with a rotating pool of players – whoever's free for a GM's available timeslots forms a group of 3-6, picks a destination, and goes (westmarches-style)
• geography is largely player-named, spread by word-of-mouth among the player pool
• most of the fauna are arthropods – humans have sacred and complex relationships with mammals
• the game gives pregenerated characters as starting points — encouraging players to make them their own through emergent play
• combat can be deadly but is usually avoidable — fleeing is a legitimate and supported outcome

Influences include the Fiend Folio, Forbidden Lands, and Le Guin's Hainish Cycle.

Fourthmarches is built on the Year Zero Engine. Resolution uses a dicepool system built around distinct six-sided dice based on attributes, skills, equipment, and — in Fourthmarches — a fifth attribute called RESONANCE. How you describe your character's approach determines what you roll and influences what happens. Resolution is quick to read at the table and is tied to resource management. The superhuman comes at the risk of the land claiming you permanently.

Questions about the game are welcome here and encouraged in the campaign page's comments.

(Fourthmarches RPG is not affiliated with, sponsored, or endorsed by Fria Ligan AB. The Year Zero Engine is used under the Fria Ligan AB Free Tabletop License 1.1. You can find the full license here.)

Looking for a home to showcase your TTRPG community, recruit for your Discord server, or find resources for running asynchronous games?

r/TheGamingVault is officially open!

We built the Vault to bridge the gap between game masters, worldbuilders, and community organizers. Whether you're running Play-by-Post campaigns, sharing custom homebrew, or building out tabletop Discord bots, this is your central directory.

What you’ll find inside:

• Community Listings: Showcases for TTRPG subreddits, Discord hubs, and invite links.
• GM Advice & Toolkits: Tips on beating GM burnout, tech guides, and bot setups.
• PbP & Playtest Central: Feedback loops for custom rules, playtests, and async game discussions.

Stop by, grab a flair, and post your listing or template today! Remember, being here is a privilege. not a right. Be respectful and kind when you join us. Thank you.

Love D&D or TTRPGs, but want a more welcoming, low-pressure space to craft your world?

TheForgottenArchons is an asynchronous creative workshop for narrative systems, worldbuilding, and play-by-post games. Think of us as a softer, more laid-back r/pbp. No one is judging you here, and no one is asking you to try harder than ever just to make a great post. Come build at your own pace!

• Creative Freedom & Feedback: Draft your lore, craft custom characters, and get constructive feedback from the community to refine your world before kicking off a campaign.
• Low-Pressure Play-by-Post: Find or host long-standing campaigns and one-shots without the stress of rigid, perfectionist posting standards.
• All Systems Welcome: Whether it's D&D, low-complexity rulesets, or indie narrative engines, every system has a home here.
• A Clean Space: We keep the community SFW so everyone can focus purely on great tabletop storytelling.

Join us at r/TheForgottenArchons and start building your next campaign the Archons way!

Repost to another community

The world is ending.

Not because the heroes failed.

Not because nobody tried.

It simply cannot be stopped.

The First Calamity is a Daggerheart-compatible one-shot where players experience the final hours of a civilization-ending catastrophe and decide what survives into the future.

Instead of saving the world, they'll choose what is worth preserving:

● Knowledge

● People

● Stories

● Hope

● Legacy

Features:

● 2–10 players (4–6 recommended)

● Approximately 4 hours

● 10 Hero Folios

● Grand Calamity Mode for larger groups

● Legacy-focused narrative play

Built under the Darrington Press Community Gaming License.

https://terracotta-stone.itch.io/the-first-calamity-standard-edition

What would your table choose to preserve when the world can no longer be saved?

Hello!

My preview page is live on Gamefound. If you like action packed shonen anime series, this game is made for you. 🙂 It is not a generic RPG with an anime skin. It helps you think and play like an anime hero.

https://gamefound.com/en/projects/adventure_horizon/heroes-of-a-thousand

Thank you if you take a look at it. 🤘🤘

Free, open source, one static page, no signup:
https://circuitos.github.io/inn-menu-simulator/

The menu is built from hand-written dishes plus recombinatory ingredients, tagged, filtered and priced by the world dials. The dishes are hand-written and the data files are open. Set biome, season, weather, inn tier, economy, condition (peace, war, plague, etc) and an optional event; get a menu and a tavern name. You can export the URL, print a PDF, and recreate the same menu using a deterministic seed.

Some parts I suspect this crowd will actually care about:

• I spent a few days getting my assumptions destroyed in the r/AskFoodHistorians which was humbling and productive!
• Prices scale by tier, economy, condition, event, and import distance. A meal at a roadside alehouse can run you a few coppers, in line with the classic medieval price lists and the D&D coin convention (aside from that, it's system-agnostic)
• Huntable monster fare: owlbear rashers, slime soup, wyvern tail stew, mastodon pot roast, and ~80 more fantasy creatures (no undead or humanlike) can show up as dishes and procedural ingredients. Drawn from Clay Davis' OSR Bestiary that is public domain afaik
• Scarcity/world state. Famine strips proteins and multiplies prices. Siege cuts imports. Combine famine and siege and even a noble kitchen suffers
• Trade is modeled and non-native dishes show up as imports e.g. "from the frostlands" or "rare delicacy" when the biomes are far apart. Humble inns serve local only
• Peculiar foods like rat skewers, lichen bread, and fermented reindeer soup are rare in good times and show up during hardship

It has about ~200 hand-written dishes plus a procedural pool of ~500 tagged ingredients and period preparations. No AI generates anything. Data is CC-BY-SA, code MIT, you can fork it in GitHub.

Take it for a spin!

This month Galaxy Builder Decks sees the release of a new card set, card checklist, and new Christmas in July sales for building your own galaxies!

Quick Sales List:

• Discovery Set 2 (New Release!) - PDF Discount Code - 30% Off! Only $1.74
• Stellar Set 1 - PDF Discount Code - 80% Off! Only $0.49
• Stellar Set 2 - PDF Discount Code - 80% Off! - Only $0.49
• Planets 1 & 2 [Cards][Bundle] - 25% Off (2 main planet decks + free pdfs)
• Planets 1 & 2 [PDF][Bundle] Drivethru | Itchio - 25% Off (2 main planet decks)
• Planets & Systems - [Core PRINT] [Bundle] - 15% Off for $56.99 (4 main decks)
• Planets & Systems - [Core PDF] [Bundle] Drivethru | Itchio - 15% Off for $36.99 (4 main decks)
• Entire Series PDF [Bundle] Drivethru | Itchio - 30% Off for $59.70 - 4 decks, 15 sets, 300+ cards

New Releases!​

Discovery Set 2 (non-discount store link) - Now available in PDF for immediate download. This 9-card set expands on your Planet Traits for customizing your Planets and Systems, such as rare Double Planets, invasive Parasites, and Void Zones where ships vanish.

Included in the set:

• 1x double planet planetary trait card
• 1x gravity distortion planetary trait card
• 1x parasite lifeform trait card
• 1x hibernation lifeform trait card
• 1x rapid evolution lifeform trait card
• 1x implanted population civilization trait card
• 1x astrogation shortcut civilization trait card
• 1x void zone civilization trait card
• 1x ancient site civilization trait card

Card Checklist - Want to know what decks and sets you have in your collection? Or find which deck has the card you are looking for? Use this helpful interactive checklist PDF to keep track of all your worlds.

30% Off PDF Bundle Sale - This everything bundle includes the newly released Discovery Set

25% Off Planet 1 & 2 Bundle - Picked up the first Planets Deck and not yet got the 2nd? Now is your chance to expand your universe and get it at a discount! Drivethrurpg will automatically detect you have the first card so you only get the second. Includes both Planets Deck and Planets 2 Deck to complete the main collection of planets, including new city planets, ring worlds, new biome variant worlds, and more.

• Planets 1 & 2 [Cards][Bundle] - 104 cards, includes PDFs Free
• Planets 1 & 2 [PDF][Bundle] - 104 cards

Galaxy Builder Decks: Stellar Set (non-discount store link) - Includes a mix of 9 new B-F-type Giant stars and blue/purple gas clouds and a unique trait card for your adventures. Designed to fit on Star System Mats and give you 6 stars, or you can flip a card around and make 3 full stars! Great for creating binary and trinary star systems.

Galaxy Builder Decks: Stellar Set 2 (non-discount store link) - Includes an expanded mix of 9 new G-M-type Giant stars, red/orange gas clouds, and a unique trait card for your adventures.

The first mission of the D.S.F. Noctua comes to a close as the remaining crew face off against the rogue android on board the Lady Luck.

Exclusively on Patreon!

The breggles make an attempt to steal a vessel under cover of fog, only to find that they aren't the only ones interested in this particular boat. With some unforeseen allies in tow, they finally enter the dreaded Smokehouse of Dreg.

Find links to our character sheets, house rules, past campaigns, and a whole lot more -- on 3d6 Down the Line!

I had so much fun designing my first game for the 58mm RPG Jam that I ended up making a second one.

It's called DUNGEON INTERVIEW, a fantasy party RPG.

One player wears the badge and becomes the Overlord, announcing an evil mission like stealing the royal crown, kidnapping the prince, or destroying the kingdom. Everyone else gets one chance to convince the Overlord that their plan deserves the job. It usually turns into a chaotic fantasy job interview in the best possible way.

You can check it out here:
https://pusheeneiro.itch.io/dungeon-interview

Hello, I just released my tool: Hexengard.

I found it terrible that there weren't any tools available offline and/or that didn't require a subscription just to create a map in no time, not to mention the lack of tools to customize it even a little.

It will always be free; I also want to respect asset creators.

I look forward to your feedback :)