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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. Indie role-playing game designers participate in several development communities and game distribution networks. Indie games also grant their own awards committees.
Evil Hat Productions is a company that produces role-playing games and other tabletop games. They are best known for the free indie RPG system Fate, Blades in the Dark, and Thirsty Sword Lesbians, all of which have won multiple awards.
David Vincent Baker is a designer and theorist of tabletop role-playing games and the owner of indie role-playing games publisher Lumpley Games, which also hosts the archives of The Forge. He and his wife Meguey Baker designed Apocalypse World, the first game in the Powered by the Apocalypse system. Apocalypse World won Game of the Year, Best Support, and Most Innovative game at the 2010 Indie RPG Awards, and was 2011 RPG of the Year at both the Golden Geek Awards and Lucca Comics & Games. Baker also designed Dogs in the Vineyard, which won the 2004 Indie RPG Game of the Year and Innovation Award and was one of three games shortlisted for the 2004 Diana Jones Award.
Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) is a tabletop role playing game design framework developed by Meguey Baker and Vincent Baker for the 2010 game Apocalypse World and later adapted for hundreds of other RPGs.
Meguey Baker is a tabletop role-playing game designer, independent publisher and quilt historian. She and her husband Vincent Baker designed Apocalypse World, the first game in the Powered by the Apocalypse system.
Blades in the Dark is a tabletop fantasy role-playing game by John Harper, set in a fictional city of Doskvol, inspired by Victorian London and Gothic fiction. The game was crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2015 and published at the start of 2017.
Whitney "Strix" Beltrán is a narrative designer and Project Narrative Director at Hidden Path Entertainment. Her writing and design career includes the indie game Bluebeard's Bride. She also founded the advocacy initiative Gaming as Other to promote inclusivity in the gaming community.
Banana Chan is a Chinese Canadian game designer and writer for tabletop role-playing games and board games. Chan and Sen-Foong Lim created Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall (2021). Chan has written for over twenty tabletop games, including the official Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021), Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, and the third edition of Betrayal at House on the Hill (2022).
Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a narrative-focused tabletop role-playing game that emphasizes telling "melodramatic and queer stories". The game was funded via a 2020 Kickstarter campaign and published by Evil Hat Productions in 2021. It uses a modification of the Powered by the Apocalypse game system.
Jeeyon Shim is a second generation Korean American game designer and writer. A former outdoor educator, her body of work is strongly influenced by themes of connection to the natural world. Playing Shim's narrative games often involves creating a keepsake artifact.
Lucian Kahn is an American role-playing game writer/designer and musician based in Brooklyn. His work focuses on LGBT, Jewish, and subcultural themes, typically utilizing satire and farce. His games include Visigoths vs. Mall Goths and If I Were a Lich, Man, and his music includes Schmekel.
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. In collaboration with Benjamin Rosenbaum, 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.
Magpie Games is an American tabletop role-playing games publishing company. Their 2021 crowdfunding campaign to fund the publication of Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game raised over five million dollars, breaking the record for Kickstarter's highest earning tabletop role-playing game. Other notable publications include Bluebeard's Bride and a role-playing game adaptation of the board game Root. The publisher has won IndieCade, ENNIE Awards, and Indie Game Developer Network awards.
Wanderhome is an indie role-playing game by game designer Jay Dragon about animal people in a pastoral setting, based upon the Belonging Outside Belonging game system by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum. It is published by Possum Creek Games. Unlike typical tabletop role-playing games, Wanderhome does not use dice, turns, or a gamemaster, focusing instead on the characters' emotional journey. Dialogue takes the place of battles, and gameplay revolves around question prompts.
Visigoths vs. Mall Goths is an urban fantasy tabletop role-playing game with LGBTQ dating sim elements by Lucian Kahn, with art by Robin Eisenberg. The ancient Visigoths have time traveled to 1990s Los Angeles and are battling mall goths for control of the mall. The game's tone is silly and the setting has many puns. The game was inspired by 1990s movies The Craft, Empire Records, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Clueless.
Bluebeard's Bride is a gothic horror tabletop role-playing game based on the Bluebeard folktale. It was designed and written by Whitney "Strix" Beltrán, Marissa Kelly, and Sarah Richardson, and published by Magpie Games in 2017. Players represent five aspects of a woman's mind as she explores the mansion of her frightening new husband.
Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall is a tabletop role-playing game about Chinese immigrants to North America managing a family restaurant while battling Jiangshi, legendary hopping vampires. The game was designed by Banana Chan and Sen-Foong Lim, who are both Chinese immigrants. It was published independently in 2021 after a Kickstarter campaign raised over US$100,000. The instructions focus heavily on authentic portrayals of Chinese history and immigrant experiences. The default scenario takes place in San Francisco's Chinatown during the 1920s, but the game box comes with a book of scenarios by a variety of writers offering more adventures in different cities and historical periods. The game's tone can range from serious to comedy horror. Themes include fighting racism, exploring intergenerational knowledge and relationships, coping with economic hardship, and working together as a family.
Grant Howitt is a tabletop role-playing game designer, publisher, and journalist. He won six ENNIE Awards for his game Heart: The City Beneath. His game Honey Heist, which inspired an online trend of self-published games with one-page rulesets, has been featured on Critical Role, The Adventure Zone, and Friends at the Table. Through his publishing company Rowan, Rook and Decard, Howitt is a co-designer on Kieron Gillen's DIE: The Roleplaying Game.
If I Were a Lich, Man is a boxed set of three comedic, Jewish tabletop role-playing games about creative resistance against authoritarianism. The games were written by Lucian Kahn and illustrated by Ezra Rose. The box contains three games: "If I Were a Lich, Man," "Same Bat Time, Same Bat Mitzvah," and "Grandma's Drinking Song." It was published by Hit Point Press in 2023 after the publisher's kickstarter campaign raised $84,590 in two weeks. It won an ENNIE Award and an Indie Game Developer Network award.
Sharang Biswas is an Indian American designer/writer of tabletop role-playing games and interactive media, a writer of speculative fiction, an adjunct professor of game studies at NYU Game Center, and a freelance games journalist. His work focuses on LGBTQ and science fiction and fantasy themes. Biswas has won multiple awards for his game writing work as both a solo designer and a collaborator: one IndieCade award, four ENNIE Awards, and two Indie Game Developer Network awards. He was an Artist in Residence at the Museum of the Moving Image.
References
- ↑ "The Gaming Shelf Celebrates the Indie Groundbreaker Awards". Gizmodo. 2022-08-02. Retrieved 2023-03-27.
- ↑ "Indie Game Developer Network". Indie Game Developer Network. Retrieved 2023-03-27.
- ↑ "Indie Game Developer Network". Dicebreaker. Retrieved 2023-03-27.
- ↑ Wieland, Rob (August 2, 2018). "THESE 5 INCREDIBLE INDIE RPGS ARE GROUNDBREAKING (AND AWARD-WINNING)". Nerdist.
- ↑ Girdwood, Andrew (2022-09-11). "2022 IGDN Diversity Sponsorship opens applications and funding". Geek Native. Retrieved 2023-03-27.
- ↑ "Serena and the Power of Collaborative Indie Game Development". the-artifice.com. 26 July 2015. Retrieved 2023-03-28.
- ↑ "Indie RPG Awards". www.indie-rpg-awards.com. Retrieved 2023-03-27.
- ↑ https://auramakesgames.itch.io/
- ↑ "Fall of Magic – Heart of the Deernicorn".
- ↑ "Downfall: Less Than Three Games".
- ↑ "DriveThruRPG".
- ↑ https://www.drivethrucards.com/product/144510/183-Days
- ↑ "Seven Wonders – A Story Games Anthology". 18 November 2015.
- ↑ "DriveThruRPG".
- ↑ "Masks".
- ↑ "Bluebeard".
- ↑ "Bluebeard".
- ↑ "DriveThruRPG".
- ↑ "Damn the Man, Save the Music! By Turtlebun".
- ↑ "Feast by astrolingus".
- ↑ "Harlem Unbound - 2nd Edition - PDF".
- ↑ "Dialect: A Game about Language and How it Dies".
- ↑ "Book of Rooms".
- ↑ "DriveThruRPG".
- ↑ "Good Society: A Jane Austen Roleplaying Game".
- ↑ "Verdure by astrolingus".
- ↑ "Companions' Tale [Print+PDF] :: Print+PDF Bundles :: IPR".
- ↑ "Humblewood".
- ↑ "Afterlife: Wandering Souls [Book & PDF]| Angry Hamster Publishing". 11 September 2019.
- ↑ "Mazes | 9th Level Games".
- ↑ http://ifiwerealichman.com
- ↑ "Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello by NessunDove".
- ↑ https://diwatamnl.itch.io/lutong-banwa
- ↑ "Karanduun - Make God Bleed Edition by makapatag".
- ↑ "Slayers by Gila RPGS".
- ↑ "This Discord Has Ghosts in It by will jobst, World Champ Game Co".
- ↑ "Brave Zenith by Roll 4 Tarrasque".
- ↑ "A Fantastic Longing for Adventure by timhutchings".
- ↑ "Arcon by KiennaS, JustJasonPls".
- ↑ "GUN&SLINGER by Nevyn Holmes".
- ↑ "My Body is a Cage by Batts".
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Carter, Chase (2023-08-01). "IGDN's 2023 Groundbreaker winners include a 90-pound butter heist, reality-spanning stickers and dinos in cars". Dicebreaker. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
- ↑ https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/slugblaster/news/slugblaster-tabletop-rpg-kickstarter
- ↑ https://www.dicebreaker.com/categories/roleplaying-game/best-games/zine-month-2023-rpgs
- ↑ https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/the-sticker-game/news/sticker-game-rpg