I As a Player Character in Nobunaga's Black Castle, you are already dead. Nobunaga killed you and sent you to Hell. But your heart burned for vengeance, burned so hot that now you are back in this world. You have one overpowering desire: kill Oda Nobunaga!

Nobunaga’s Black Castle is a complete tabletop roleplaying game by Japanese designer Yusuke Tokita. Green Ronin, under license from CONOS, is publishing Nobunaga’s Black Castle in English for the first time.

We have just launched our Patreon page: Mostly Boring Battlemap Threater. To celebrate we have created six free launch releases for anyone to come, check us out, and use in their games as a trial of our project by simply following our Patreon page for free.

We have created 44 unique images across six scenes that include: Forest paths, a mine entrance, a foggy swamp, desolate desert footprints, and a simple roadside tavern. All of these images are doubled into hi-res downloads as well.

Over the next month (likely longer) we will be continuing to release the daytime version of the Theater of the Mind background with the paired battlemap. We hope to set a release rate of one scene per week, but promise two releases per month minimum. After our introduction period, we will continue to release a free TotM + BM pair once per month to all followers.

https://www.patreon.com/MostlyBoringBattlemapTheater/

Follow us here and we hope these scenes will help in your games.

Hey guys, been reflecting on this one game I played in earlier this year, I'd like to know if I was the asshole.

So I was playing in this Draw Steel game, which is a lot like D&D. And in this GM's custom world, the big gimmick was these giant clockwork animals called the Gear Lords, who are like gods. They keep the world in one piece and look after the land and they're super duper important.

So the bad guys have been attacking the Gear Lords, and we the heroes have been saving them. And eventually we come to the Iguana Lord's domain, which is a big volcano that's erupting because the Iguana Lord is in trouble. And we actually meet the BBEG for the first time, but we're losing because we're low on resources and we're not being very tactical. And I'm giving the party healing and saying "run away", and we survive long enough that the BBEG leaves because he doesn't wanna get blowed up by the volcano.

So the volcano is erupting and it's gonna come and turn the Iguana Lord to scrap. But I'm a magical healer with all of these teleports and buff spells, and I think I can save it. And in this moment, I can kinda tell that I think we're supposed to lose here. The Iguana Lord is scripted to die. But I don't want to. And I'm like "Isn't there something I can do? Can I spend a few more minutes trying to save it?" And the GM relents, and he lets us do a montage test to save the Iguana Lord and help it stop the volcano. So the entire region is saved from disaster, yippee!

And I feel like the GM didn't want that option to be on the table. I feel like I kinda strongarmed him into letting us save the Iguana Lord.

Another moment from that campaign that really stands out to Me in My memory is this moment where an NPC (Who we suspected was the BBEG) was going on about this old hero from the previous generation who was super important in the lore and we all had a connection to and respected. And he's arguing that nobody can ever live up to this hero's example, so life is pointless and we shouldn't try to do good things.

And I speak up in character and I say "You're right, I can't be like that hero..." and the GM starts to reply but I continue: "I'm going to be better than him." And I can feel that he wasn't expecting that at all. The GM thought we were all going to agree with the maybe-BBEG's nihilism. I really don't think he was expecting that kind of shonen-protagonist energy I was bringing to the table.

And this moment stands out in My memory because a week after that session, a week until the following session, I get a private message from the GM saying I'm not in the game anymore. And I don't get a lot of details about why, most of the message is "no hard feelings" type stuff. But he does say that "the things we value in a TTRPG are quite different" and that we have incompatible narrative approaches. And he also had seen some of the stories I told from the game and felt I was unintentionally portraying him in a negative light. Which was very unintentional and I still don't fully understand.

I wish I had got a chance to talk about these issues with him, and I regret not communicating with him more when I had the chance. It has become clear in retrospect that he had way stronger feelings about all this than I did, and I didn't know. So that sucks, because I enjoyed playing in his game, and if a darker tone or more struggle before overcoming the bad guys is what he wanted, then I wish we had been able to do that.

As I write this I realise that you can't really tell if I was being too pushy about saving the Iguana Lord based on reading My memories any better than I can. So I guess I'm looking for is a kind word, and a suggestion of how to be more receptive to others' feelings. Which I do struggle with as an autistic being.

It is with a heavy heart I must admit that after 24 years in print and well over 20,000 copies sold, Burning Wheel is out of print. The reason is both simple and nuanced.

The simple reason: we're out of money. Prices for everything rapidly increased this year. Sea freight costs doubled from when we planned work to when projects shipped. Even Gen Con’s costs skyrocketed. We also gambled that having new products would elevate our sales overall, so I pushed us to produce Middarmark and SPG: Interceptor this year (and I even wanted to do a third project as well), but preorders didn't hit their marks. Even with the launch of SPG: Interceptor at Gen Con—one of our most successful debuts ever!—and we still lost money.

The nuanced reason: The balance of being an indie publisher always involves choosing whether to reprint old titles or invest in new ones. Our sales have been at the end of their long tail, so we decided to invest in new titles to try to create energy and show folks that we're still here. As of yet, that gamble hasn't paid off.

The industry has changed a ton in the past 24 years and the forces arrayed against us now as a venerable small press publisher are considerable. We're not "content creators," voice actors or reviewers, nor do we want to be; we don't make D&D clones with busy layouts. We make fundamentally good games that introduce new ideas to the conversation about RPGs — we want to play them with you to have that conversation. And yet the number of folks who come to us looking for those types of games has been steadily dwindling, so we need to discover new strategies to connect with those people again. We know they are out there!

Which takes us back to the top: the simple reason of bad timing. Our stock ran out as we are cash poor and production and shipping prices are super high. It's a heavy blow—a severe wound—but we're not down yet. We passed our Steel test. With enough Artha to shrug off our wounds and some luck, we can get back into the fight. It will just take some time and a few helping dice from people who love our games.

Source: Luke on reddit.

Head to 1940's New Orlean with the Interview with the Vampire Starter Set and A Scent of Cloves and Lilac adventure.
https://www.tabletopsentinel.com/news/horror/anne-rices-immortal-universe-rpg-gets-a-1940s-new-orleans-starter-set

I guess the setting has the potential to be focused on drama between characters and offer something else than VtM. The points about "Emotional damage" health track and memories look interesting

Does anyone have some more info?

Hi all,

Sharing Dice Roost, a free browser-based virtual tabletop for running tabletop RPG sessions online. No installs, just open a link and play.

A few things that make it a bit different: • AI-voiced NPCs: give an NPC a personality and let it actually talk back to your players during a scene, instead of you improvising every voice • Shared map with tokens, dice roller, character sheets, and session chat, all in one place • Built to be lightweight, easy to get a new group into with no learning curve

Still actively growing it and happy to answer any questions.

👉 https://diceroost.com/

It popped up in my notifications and the premise makes my head spin.

Gumshoe with one player? Wouldn't that need to be a Sherlock Holmes kind of investigator to cover all the needed specialisations?

Gumshoe in sword and sorcery? So instead of "of course you get that clue, the question is how much you get from it" it becomes "of course you hit that goblin, the question is how well"?

And apparently it's not something new.

Has anyone played this? How did it look like?

Just ran Gardens of Ynn, the classic depthcrawl adventure by Emmy Allen over the weekend.

I used the cheat sheet from the Eldritch Fields blog which has all of the tables you need to run the adventure.

It's great, but uses the page numbers from the original first edition of Ynn. I was using the newer, purple hardcover edition.

I made my own modified version with the newer page numbers:

https://polyhedralnonsense.com/2026/08/04/gardens-of-ynn-an-updated-cheat-sheet/

Here's the original version from the Eldritch Fields blog:

https://eldritchfields.blogspot.com/2018/11/cheat-sheet-for-gardens-of-ynn.html

2026 ENNIE Awards Winners

Source: Youtube Stream and BlueSky account. It is not yet on the official website.

The distant call of seagulls and the gentle crashing of waves can be heard near these City Docks, where sailors from faraway lands and merchants visit. These docks are always busy, as ships are loaded up with shipments both mundane and rare...

Welcome to the City Docks! This map features a busy port in a city, featuring warehouses, a tavern, inn, and various other buildings next to the sea. Ships large and small line the docks, and a lighthouse sits at the far northwestern point.

I also included Night, No Ships, Polluted, Ruined, Storm, Under Attack, and Winter variants. Foundry VTT modules with pre-built walls and lighting are available to patrons.

Download this map in high-resolution for free here.

Want to see more maps? Check out my archive here.

Free League announced a Backerkit campaign for three new The One Ring 2e books:

• Creatures Strange and Foul, a bestiary of dark creatures and new enemies (the 5e-compatible version is titled Of Orcs and Evil Things)
• The White Tower and the Hall of Gold, a sourcebook containing locations and resources set in Gondor and Rohan (Realms of the South is the 5e title)
• a revised publishing of the Core Rules incorporating erratas and clarifications

I'm extremely excited about the Gondor/Rohan book. Eriador is beautiful, but the idea of living adventures in the same epic backdrop as the War of the Ring is simply too exciting!

Edit: forgot the 5e title for the sourcebook.

Bundle of Holding are currently not offering one, not offering two, not even offering three... but offering FOUR bundles of GURPS tabletop roleplaying bundles courtesy of Steve Jackson Games... and that's just the start of the GURPS 4E Week promotion!

Let's see how cross-posting from Mastodon through Piefed looks

Edit: fix the title

Hello! My name is Jürgen, and I translate German folk tales.

Folk tales are, essentially, another oral storytelling tradition like tabletop role-playing games, where stories are told by amateur storytellers for their audiences. There are some important differences, of course - tabletop role-playing games emphasize group storytelling, as well as (usually) serial storytelling involving the same protagonists, which are largely absent in traditional folk tales. Nevertheless, I've often noted that they share the same overall "chaotic energy" of more formal story structures in art and literature, and indeed both folk tale storytellers and role-players often have similar ideas.

In the 19th century, German folk tales received a lot of scholarly attention. Numerous early folklorists inspired by the Brothers Grimm collected folk tales from specific regions and published them together with added commentary elabroating on the historical, cultural, and folkloric context of the tales.

I've been reading through a lot of these collection in recent years, and this has given me an idea for a new type of metafiction:

Imagine that you are a folklorist, and have researched folk tales featuring specific supernatural creatures. Then you publish them as a collection, adding your own scholarly commentary to the basic tales you have collected from the locals.

Only both the folklorist and the folk tales aren't from Earth, but from a fictional, D&D-type fantasy setting, and the supernatural creatures in question really do exist in that world.

So the folklorist in question could not only write about the folk tales themselves, but also compare and contrast the perception of the "common folk" (as shared in those tales) with what is known by other scholars and the latest "scientific knowledge" about these creatures.

A good example of this kind of metafiction can be found in assorted Elder Scrolls lore books - my favorite being "Ancient Tales of the Dwemer" where the editor constantly snarks about the shoddy scholarship of the original author - and this kind of snarking absolutely shows up in 19th century folk tale collections as well.

What do you think of this concept? Do you think this might sell?

And do you have any suggestions for improving this concept?

BLUF: Title, basically.

Extra Context: A couple years back, I picked up the 4th edition of Twilight: 2000. For those don't know, this is a post-apocalyptic RPG which was first released during the absolute peak of Reagan-era Cold War saber rattling. Unlike other, more fanciful or escapist takes on life "after the end", Twilight skewed much more simulationist, with Tom Clancy levels of hard-on for NATO and Soviet personnel and equipment statistics. Think This War of Mine meets ARMA 3, moreso than Fallout or Wasteland.

I start with this preamble to communicate how different in tone this system is from the games of 5e DnD I've played and run in the past. While the latest version of the Twilight rules is, to my understanding, significantly less packed with grognard crunch than previous iterations, I still find myself overwhelmed with all of the various mechanics and slight rule variations. As an example I hope is illustrative, to fire a weapon classified as a machine gun, your character uses their "heavy weapons" skill, but they follow the "ranged combat" rules, because heavy weapons typically refers to explosive type weapons. You also have to remember whether the MG you're using is classified as Light, Medium, or Heavy, as there are different requirements/penalties based on your character's stance. In and of itself, not too bad, and it pretty much tracks with the considerations I would put in place if I were designing this system, but it becomes a bit much with the everything else of the system. Case in point: the entry for hand grenades states: "grenades use the same rules as heavy weapons, with these exceptions:" and then goes on to list 6 bullet points, which makes me think that it hardly uses the same rules as heavy weapons at all lol.

To be clear, I don't necessarily want to jettison this level of crunch, as I think it's integral to the tone the system is designed around, but fuck me if it isn't a lot to keep track of, especially since I'll have to shepherd potential players through it efficiently if I have any hope of actually playing a game.

With that being said, any advice from the field? Experience with Twilight would be a bonus (any edition), but if anyone has general tips for tackling new systems, I'm all ears.

I did write in my blog regarding D&D, it's evolution and changes done, and what I think could improve the game. And learnings from other games. Maybe this is a good read for ya'll.

Feedbacks, discussion and other topics related are welcome.
Thanks in advance for the reading.

A Night in Tobrien is a short film set in the world of The Dark Eye. This German pen-and-paper role-playing game, first released in 1984, is home to epic tales featuring dragons, demons, and armies. Ours, however, is different—it takes place in an inn.

This german shortfilm (with english subtitles) was produced by a close personal friend. It is fully a hobby-project by a bunch of geeks who wanted to show Ulisses (the german equivalent of WotC) that there is a hunger for good quality movies set in the fictional world of Aventuria. It was completely privately written, funded and produced by them in Germany and Switzerland.

It is a little overacted in some places (because (edit: most of*) the actors are theater people and LARPers, not tv or movie actors), but for such a tiny production it turned out remarkably well imho.

*the actor of the bard is indeed an actor that had a lead role in a german public television series