The Silent Bard

We help you use our game to do it. That's basically our motto around here.  It's a design choice for Level One . Paul was just on another Round the Table panel, this time for morality systems in TTRPGs (likely out in August), and we've been thinking about them a lot to make sure he'll be ready. Does An RPG Need A Morality System? In a word, No . GURPS, Traveller, Shadowrun... Paranoia . All perfectly functional games, none of them particularly invested in tracking whether your character is a good person. A lot of tables handwave alignment right out of D&D without losing anything they miss. One of the panelists was Fern of Studio Hex  whose upcoming Kickstarter, BIOPHAGE , is another great example - two players, one host body, and you have to do terrible things to survive... The setting is rich ground for moral dilemmas, but the rules  don't need to intrude. Can you imagine someone trying to bolt a serious morality system onto Paranoia? Please, Troubleshooter.....

 TL;DR: a good local shop gives me hope for the Indie TTRPG market. Suburban Gaming Lives! Today I popped into  The Fantasy Shop  in Maplewood, MO (On Facebook  here ) for our not-so-regular in-person playtesting game. We try to have one every other week or so and I'm happy to say they are going quite well. I'd like to thank the shop for the ongoing welcome.   The shop is a great mix of comics, manga, interesting board games, wargames, and TTRPGs. The RPG games have a few scattered books, but are mostly concentrated on two sizeable bookcases in the back. The left shelf is WotC D&D, with Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Planescape and more. The  other  is pretty much everything else. Because I like to support local businesses - especially ones that let me regularly use their facilities - and because I try to stay informed on the market, I bought a copy of  Mörk Borg . I found it odd that there was only one  Pathfinder  box, and that it...