The Quiet Year
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The Quiet Year
''The Quiet Year'' is a map-drawing tabletop role-playing game for 2-4 players about community building, by Avery Alder. The illustrations are by Ariel Norris, and Jackson Tegu is credited with additional design insights. It was independently published in 2013 by Buried Without Ceremony. ''The Quiet Year'' won the 2013 Indie RPG Awards for Most Innovative Game. A new iteration of the game, with larger cards, rules refinements, and extra components, was published in 2019. The game has been featured on the actual play podcasts ''The Adventure Zone'' and ''Friends at the Table''. Gameplay ''The Quiet Year'' combines elements of tabletop role-playing games and board games. It consists of a 32-page rulebook and a deck of cards, and it additionally requires drawing tools and six-sided dice. There is no gamemaster. Players represent parts of a community, managing resources and responding to card-based prompts, all represented by a shared map that they gradually draw together throughout ...
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Avery Alder
Avery Alder is a Canadian tabletop role-playing game designer. She designs games with themes of LGBTQ self-discovery, community building, and post-apocalyptic survival. Alder invented the Belonging Outside Belonging system, which became a template for future designers' games. Her work is a topic of scholarship in the history of game design. Game design and writing Alder designs and writes indie role-playing games. She designed ''The Quiet Year'', a map-making game about community building, which won the 2013 Indie RPG Awards for "Most Innovative." She also designed ''Dream Askew'', which won the 2014 Indie RPG Awards for "Best Free Game," and ''Monsterhearts'', which was nominated for the 2013 Origins Awards for Best Roleplaying Game. ''Monsterhearts'' was one of the first published Powered by the Apocalypse games and an early example of a specifically queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' ...
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Tabletop Role-playing Game
A tabletop role-playing game (typically abbreviated as TRPG or TTRPG), also known as a pen-and-paper role-playing game, is a form of role-playing game (RPG) in which the participants describe their characters' actions through speech. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a set formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, players have the freedom to improvise; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the game. The terms ''pen-and-paper'' and ''tabletop'' are generally only used to distinguish this format of RPG from other formats, since neither pen and paper nor a table are strictly necessary. Gameplay Overview In most games, a specially designated player typically called the game master (GM) purchases or prepares a set of rules and a fictional setting in which each player acts out the role of a single character. The GM describes the game world and its inhabit ...
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Indie Role-playing Game
An indie role-playing game is a role-playing game published outside traditional, "mainstream" means. Varying definitions require that commercial, design, or conceptual elements of the game stay under the control of the creator, or that the game should just be produced outside a corporate environment. Independent publication of role-playing games Indie role-playing games (RPGs) can be self-published by one or a few people who themselves control all aspects of design, promotion and distribution of the game. An independent role-playing game publisher usually lacks the financial backing of large company. This has made forms of publishing other than the traditional three-tier model more desirable to the independent publisher. Formats Independent publishers may offer games only in digital format, only in print, or they may offer the same game in a variety of formats. Some major RPG publishers have abandoned PDF publication, probably as a counter-piracy effort. Common digital form ...
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Indie RPG Awards
The Indie RPG Awards are annual, creator-based awards for Indie role-playing games and supplements. They were established in 2002 by Andy Kitkowski, and are the most sought-after awards in the ''Indie RPG'' community. For the purposes of the Awards, there exists a following "definition" of an Indie role-playing game: * A game where the creator is the person who has written at least 50% of the actual game content. * A game where the creator has full control of content and publishing. * A game where the creator is the publisher, with full control over expenses and profits. Categories The following categories for nominations have been used throughout the history of the awards: *Indie Game of the Year - the main award for Indie Games. *Indie Supplement of the Year - for best Supplement for an Indie Game. *Best Free Game - for free Indie Games. *Best Support - for the publisher has best supported a previously published game or supplement. *Best Production - for best written and most at ...
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Actual Play
Actual play, also called live play, is a genre of podcast or web show in which people play tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) for an audience. Actual play often encompasses in-character interactions between players, storytelling from the gamemaster, and out-of-character engagements such as dice rolls and discussion of game mechanics. The genre emerged in the early 2000s and became more popular throughout the decade, particularly with the 2015 debut of ''Critical Role'', an actual play webseries featuring professional voice actors. History According to Evan Torner writing in ''Watch Us Roll'', actual play is rooted in phenomena including magazine "play reports" of wargames and internet forums dedicated to role-playing games. With the emergence of esports, livestreamed gaming, and Let's Plays, actual plays of TTRPGs became a popular podcast and webseries format, and contributed to the resurgence of TTRPGs in the 2010s and 2020s. In 2008, the creators of ''Penny Arcade'' part ...
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The Adventure Zone
''The Adventure Zone'' is a weekly comedy and adventure actual play podcast based loosely upon the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game series, along with other role-playing games. The show is distributed by the Maximum Fun network and hosted by brothers Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy, and their father Clint McElroy. Regular episodes of the podcast feature the family solving puzzles, fighting enemies, and leveling up their characters in a series of cinematic and humorous encounters. History Origins and ''Balance'' (2014–2017) In 2010, the McElroy brothers launched their flagship podcast ''My Brother, My Brother and Me'', an advice podcast which joined the Maximum Fun network in 2011. During the 97th episode in May 2012, the brothers answered a question about a ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game—which Justin called "The Adventure Zone". The McElroy brothers would ultimately begin playing with their father Clint in the summer of 2014, using the newly released Starter Set for the fifth ...
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Friends At The Table
''Friends at the Table'' is an actual play indie podcast hosted by Austin Walker. The podcast has been active since September 2014, and episodes are released weekly. The collaboration between the gamemaster and the players is a major component of the show, in contrast to many tabletop role-playing games where the gamemaster has total control over worldbuilding. Production The show is an actual play podcast, but due to its heavy editing, the show is similar in presentation to a radio drama or audiobook. Players on the show contribute to the worldbuilding more than in many tabletop role-playing games, where worldbuilding is often left to the gamemaster. The show has been producing episodes since September 2014, and releases episodes on a weekly basis. Cast * Austin Walker (gamemaster) * Art Martinez-Tebbel * Alicia Acampora (editor, producer) * Jack de Quidt (composer) * Sylvia Clare * Janine Hawkins * Keith J. Carberry (editor, producer) * Andrew Lee Swan * Nick Scratch Ca ...
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Gamemaster
A gamemaster (GM; also known as game master, game manager, game moderator, referee, or storyteller) is a person who acts as an organizer, officiant for regarding rules, arbitrator, and moderator for a multiplayer role-playing game. They are more common in co-operative games in which players work together than in competitive games in which players oppose each other. The act performed by a gamemaster is sometimes referred to as "Gamemastering" or simply "GM-ing". The role of a gamemaster in a traditional table-top role-playing game (pencil-and-paper role-playing game) is to weave the other participants' player-character stories together, control the non-player aspects of the game, create environments in which the players can interact, and solve any player disputes. The basic role of the gamemaster is the same in almost all traditional role-playing games, although differing rule sets make the specific duties of the gamemaster unique to that system. The role of a gamemaster in an ...
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Magpie Games
Magpie Games is an American tabletop role-playing games publishing company founded in 2011, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Their publications include ''Root: the Roleplaying Game'', an adaptation of the board game ''Root'', the horror themed game '' Bluebeard's Bride'', and ''Urban Shadows'', which has an urban fantasy setting. In 2021, Magpie Games started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the publication of '' Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game''. It became the most successful Kickstarter campaign for a table-top roleplaying game. Their games have won ENNIE Awards, IndieCade awards, and Indie Game Developer Network The Indie Game Developer Network (IGDN) is a trade association for developers of indie role-playing games, board games, card games, and LARPs. They present the annual Indie Groundbreaker Awards at Gen Con. Their other programs include a scholarsh ... awards. References IGDN Winners Entertainment companies established in 2011 Role-playing game publish ...
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Game Mechanics
In tabletop games and video games, game mechanics are the rules or ludemes that govern and guide the player's actions, as well as the game's response to them. A rule is an instruction on how to play, a ludeme is an element of play like the L-shaped move of the knight in chess. A game's mechanics thus effectively specify how the game will work for the people who play it. There are no accepted definitions of game mechanics. Some competing definitions include the opinion that game mechanics are "systems of interactions between the player and the game", that they "are more than what the player may recognize, they are only those things that impact the play experience", and "In tabletop games and video games, 'game mechanics' are the rules and procedures that guide the player and the game response to the player's moves or actions". All games use mechanics; however, there are different theories as to their ultimate importance to the game. In general, the process and study of game desig ...
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Fantasy Role-playing Games
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and drama. From the twentieth century, it has expanded further into various media, including film, television, graphic novels, manga, animations and video games. Fantasy is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the respective absence of scientific or macabre themes, although these genres overlap. In popular culture, the fantasy genre predominantly features settings that emulate Earth, but with a sense of otherness. In its broadest sense, however, fantasy consists of works by many writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians from ancient myths and legends to many recent and popular works. Traits Most fantasy uses magic or other supernatural elements as a main plot element, theme, or setting. Magic, magic practitioners ( so ...
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Indie Role-playing Games
An indie role-playing game is a role-playing game published outside traditional, "mainstream" means. Varying definitions require that commercial, design, or conceptual elements of the game stay under the control of the creator, or that the game should just be produced outside a corporate environment. Independent publication of role-playing games Indie role-playing games (RPGs) can be self-published by one or a few people who themselves control all aspects of design, promotion and distribution of the game. An independent role-playing game publisher usually lacks the financial backing of large company. This has made forms of publishing other than the traditional three-tier model more desirable to the independent publisher. Formats Independent publishers may offer games only in digital format, only in print, or they may offer the same game in a variety of formats. Some major RPG publishers have abandoned PDF publication, probably as a counter-piracy effort. Common digital for ...
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