What are the popular sci-fi games?

Seen asked on the Giants in the Playground forums with some debate over how reliable VTT numbers could be since it won't capture the old guard who shun the online. My hypothesis is that this is a smaller slice than people think but let us see what we can find out.

Starting with our contemporary VTTs Roll20 & Fantasy Grounds - as discussed in a recent post - we have 40K, Starfinder and Star Wars placing as our top 3 sci-fi games at present - displayed without 5e so the scales are not tiny.

Comparing this to the ICV2 numbers that show what retail sales buzz is - here we have placement in top 5 most popular over 50 reports since 2004 - Star wars and Starfinder with a dash of Alien as the new new thing. This was lumped by system (e.g. Star Wars counts together whether by FFG or WotC).

Shiny TTRPG links collection #17

More links of interesting inspiration for your table. Previous list found here. Inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

The Battle for The Colossal Wastes of Zhaar Epilogue on Lizardman Diaries - this was a hoot to play, I managed to miss most of the rest of the players and turns out those flashes I saw on the horizon was everyone else murdering each other!

Extending on the philosophy of just use bears - when you need to notch up the horror - use trolls.

The creators day sale inspired a few good roundups of content on itch.io - valid even now when the sale has passed.

Great piece on running OSE for the first time that serves as a referee's post-mortem on bringing players to old school play and things to watch for. This type of stuff is gold.

Review: More Thousand Thousand Islands (Zines 5, 6, 8)

tl;dr: more great zines from A Thousand Thousand Islands - grab them while you can!

The postal block caused by the plague has been lifted and I have finally gotten my hands on the new zines! Most of them, that is. I grabbed all I could - two were unavailable due to further mishaps in the global supply chain that hopefully will sort themselves out soon. I was sorely tempted to get the 'everything' bundle because it contains those 2 zines but I resisted. Fow now.

I previous reviewed the first 6 zines here but Blogger has deleted the post for reasons unknown as it has been reinstated by blogger.

Worse than Even - more on probability descriptions

Following up to this post on what do DC should certain descriptions have, I found the original posts I was thinking of and so revisit this and convert to the 5e bounded accuracy system.

I was recalling the data visualisations done by u/zonination in 2015 on reddit which was building from government research by Sherman for the CIA. Pulling apart the 2019 survey data we can show the percentage probability that respondents assigned to various words. I have re-ranked them most to least probable.

Shiny TTRPG links collection #16

A further gathering of shiny things from the far corners of the internet. Previous list found here. Inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Design diary for Them Deeper Bones with a great 'timeframes' graphic with 4 major levels for action/time ranging from ~half a month to 'seconds count'.

Some great ideas on making violent encounters more than just a slug-fest.

d66 orgs and factions from Hamster Hoard.

Trouble with inspiration for an NPC voice? Try an IDEA! The International Dialects of English site.

Actual test: Liche's Librams MtG location generator

This is a test of using the very neat set up by Liches Libram to delve into the amazing settings of Magic the Gathering to create interesting locations. This is something very dear to my heart - I have always found the Magic settings to be awesome fodder for tabletop RPGs, going all the way back - what has been a bit of a nuisance is working through the sheer volume of cards that now exist. This problem is now fixed thanks to Liche's Libram and I suggest you give it a whirl.

I mashed all the buttons on the widget to see what we got - and it told the story almost without me having to think about it like any good card reading. First the place:

Cinder Marsh with Mishra's Workshop - we are looking at an installation deep in a destroyed, polluted waste.

Review: Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar

tl;dr - a packed box of all you need to run Lankhmar in the gritty DCC feeling - lots to like if you are doing anything with cities.

A friend got me Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar for Christmas and it dropped onto my doormat like an iron ingot. This is a packed box, full of goodness and after going through it all you both have an authentic Lankhmar sword-and-sorcery box but also a great toolkit for urban play of any style. I got a jolt to write my thoughts up because DCC Lankhmar is on Bundle of Holding right now.

Unpacking the box began to feel like some kind of magic trick as I pulled more and more stuff out of this box that did not seem very large initially. There are maps! Posters to advertise your game! Setting books! Player handbooks! A Judges screen! A sign-up sheet! A starter adventure! All in nice quality stock, it feels positively luxurious as you spread it all out.