Tales From the Shelf

"Ludonarrative dissonance" is a term from game-design commentary, describing a moment when the game mechanics pull in one direction but the game story pulls in another, creating dissonance. The ‘Ludonarrative Dissidents’ are three game designers, reviewers and commentators, veterans in the field of ludic narrative, who have come together to discuss the art, science and craft of RPG design by vivisecting game systems and seeing what makes them run.  Your hosts are Ross Payton, Greg Stolze and James Wallis. Ethos Every episode of Ludonarrative Dissidents is built around four pillars: What does this game do? How does it do that? How do people play it? Why do they play it that way? (and how well does it succeed?) We examine games from all angles: mechanical, ludic, narrativist, historical, cultural, structural, whether or not it’s fun, and Greg complains about its use of the future-conditional tense. We look at its influences and pedigree, its narrative engine, its world-building, its book-design, and James reveals that he dated the designer’s sister, or something like that. In season 2 we have added episodes that look at specific aspects of RPGs, such as initiative systems, metacurrencies and diceless games. Origins The idea behind Ludonarrative Dissidents came from a Twitter discussion in early 2021. Someone was looking for RPG designers to work on a project, someone else suggested Greg and James, and after the two of them politely declined, a third person opined that a podcast with the two talking about games and game design would be quite a thing. Greg and James exchanged a virtual glance across the Atlantic, Greg mentioned the idea to Ross, the three of them filled a Google document with ideas, and the project was born.

Geek Native is an independent news site and community for tabletop roleplaying games, board games, anime, and geek culture. It covers tabletop mechanics, industry news, and reviews with a critical but welcoming tone. Whether you’re a player, a Game Master, or somewhere in between, it’s a solid place to find content that actually holds up. It also publishes practical tools for session prep and world-building -  things like spaceship name generators and lists of oddly unsettling phrases to throw at your players. Alongside those, there are columns on the psychology of gameplay and table dynamics. It’s been around long enough to build a genuine community, and it shows. Links geeknative.com - Website

RPG advice and discussion. Let's talk gaming! Actual play channel with multiple campaigns on Bandit's Keep Actual Play. Links youtube.com - Youtube channel discord.gg - Discord server patreon.com - Patreon page

Adventure Maker By Act (AMBA) If you love Pathfinder 2e, you are likely familiar with the challenge of prepping complex campaigns. Now, the adventure building process is stepping into the future with a dedicated authoring workspace called Adventure Maker By Act (AMBA) at https://amba.unwhelm.online/. This isn't just a basic text editor; it is a solid architectural framework built from the ground up to make designing your PF2e adventures faster, cleaner, and highly organized. 🌟 Key Highlights & Features • Structured Act Architecture: A clean, responsive workflow designed to break your campaign down into acts, scenes, and encounters without infinite scrolling. • Unified Character Sync: It links directly to the Wanderer's Guide ecosystem. You can seamlessly pull NPC data or push encounters back and forth to keep character sheets updated. • Seamless VTT Integration: Built to work hand-in-hand with external virtual tabletops like Owlbear Rodeo. This allows Game Masters to instantly bridge their custom narrative text and maps with live combat tracking. • Streamlined Encounter Building: A more intuitive step-by-step flow for calculating encounter budgets, scaling monster hazards, and exporting ruleset-compliant PDFs. Whether you are a Game Master looking for a cleaner digital workspace or a creator wanting a cohesive campaign design tool, AMBA bridges the gap beautifully. Check it out and see how it streamlines your next session! ________________________________________

Woe To The Wicked is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game about adventurers finding their place in a damaged world and deciding what is worth rebuilding. Explore ruined places, recover supplies, confront dangerous creatures, and navigate the interests of people trying to survive. Begin with a shared Stronghold and build relationships that can lead to greater responsibilities. A repaired road, a rescued person, or a restored workshop can matter as much as winning a fight. The game combines tactical combat, exploration, social encounters, crafting, and character growth through practiced Skills and learned Techniques. Its approach is simple: describe what you want to accomplish, choose your method, and resolve the uncertainty. Playtest materials, a character builder, and guided solo onboarding are available at woetothewickedrpg.com.

Hope you are all having a nice summer. While we haven't been bombarding the site with massive updates these past few months, we have been working on things in the background. Just to keep you all somewhat updated and ensured, that we are still actively working on the platform - here is a brief update and check-in. Minor improvements Every now and then we have pushed new and small updates to the platform. Just today, we finally got around to implementing the time & day scheduling to the game posts. So if you have a game post running, be sure to edit it and add the days you are planning on running the game, and at what time the session would be starting. Players looking for games will be also able to filter the groups based on those parameters. Do keep in mind that since the feature is new, almost all of the games listed at the moment are still without a preferred day and time - so they will not be shown to you when you use the filter. But as time goes on and games update their listing, more and more will have those elements. Additionally a few updates were added to the game post creation process - nothing gamebreaking or -changing. Just some convenience factors. .gg We have officially shifted to a new primary web address (although you are free to keep using whichever domain ending you have before - nothing should be negatively affected. But Groupfinder can now be also accessed via groupfinder.gg Even though the platform is global - having the .eu ending seemed to cause more confusion than we had anticipated. But this is more of a cosmetic change - nothing in our core values or goals has changed as a part of this shift. Library evergrowing The library is rapidly growing - every week new entries are added. Some thanks to the help of a few volunteers, to whom we are extremely grateful. It is becoming a proper tabletop gaming resource now. But it will never be complete - we are seeing new tabletop projects and creators pop up all the time - and we would love to be a gateway between them and you. Group Manager This is the biggest element we have been working on since the start of the year (and even before). While not ready to go live - we are anticipating that the day is drawing ever closer by every week and testing cycle. Group manager will be a parallel mode to Groupfinder - a system to manage your.. well.. group. Keep track of timefinder polls to schedule the next session. Share files with your players - or make them private, so that only you can see them - or only some of the players. This will make it easier to keep track of various notes, lore and character backstories. Or just share gifs.. Also a viable approach. But until we have anything more substantial to report - I will be signing off for now. But will keep a watchful and helpful eye on the platform. And if you have a friend or a group that could benefit from using Groupfinder - be sure to tell them about the site - it will be a win-win situation. The more people know about Groupfinder, the faster your games get filled - and the faster you find a group to join. Till next time.