Hello Adventurers

It's been a great week for TTRPG Wiki as we've crossed 160 systems cataloged. This is still a long way from covering the full breadth of what's out there, but we're getting there one game at a time.

What's made this week especially exciting is the number of indie creators who have reached out to me to get their games added. The big names are essential, but there's so much great work being done in the indie space that never gets the visibility it deserves. Anything we can do to change that is a win for the community.

Quick Updates

New Look — The old color scheme was getting to me. Too sterile, too clinical, and more "SaaS Dashboard" than "place where cool games live." The new look is built around a warm parchment background and a forest green accent. Cards sit on clean white surfaces, text is dark and readable, and the green pops in all the right places. It feels less like a web app and more like something you'd actually want to spend time in.

Score Display Redesign — The three metric scores (Complexity, Accessibility, Community) no longer use filled pips. Instead, each score is now a single dot on a track. This is a small but intentional change as the previous approach of filled pips visually implied "more is better," which isn't always true. A dot on a track is neutral. It shows where a system falls without suggesting which direction is good.

Feature of the Week: Indie Creator Submitted Badge

One of the things I've been thinking about since launch is how to make indie creators feel like they have a real presence here, not just a listing buried beneath D&D and Pathfinder.

Starting this week, any system submitted directly by its creator gets a ✦ Indie Creator Submitted badge. It's a small amber pill that appears on the system's card and detail page, and you can use the toggle in the toolbar to browse only creator-submitted systems. No algorithmic boost to their position in the list, they're sorted by the same popularity order as everything else, just an easy way to find and support indie creators who put their work in front of you.

The first four systems carrying the badge are Let's Go to Magic School, Aurora, SAKE, and Horse Majeure. More are coming as creators continue to reach out.

This matters to me because discovery is the single biggest problem in the indie TTRPG space. There are incredible games out there that never find their audience because they don't have a marketing budget or a built-in fanbase. If a badge helps even one person click on a game they'd otherwise scroll past, it's doing its job.

If you're a creator and want your game on the wiki, be sure to submit the system request form on the homepage.

Indie System of the Week: Horse Majeure

I'll be honest: I've never really understood comedy TTRPGs. Every funny moment I've had at the table was a byproduct of friends hanging out, not something baked into the rules. Comedy as a mechanic always seemed a little forced to me.

Horse Majeure, a single-page system submitted to the wiki by Tom Lavery, changed my mind.

The premise is incredibly simple and yet absurd: one person is the GM, and the players in groups of two work together inside a horse costume. All of this to find a delicious apple in a place where a horse (or two people in a costume pretending to be a horse) absolutely should not be. The GM's job is to paint a picture and throw obstacles in your path. The players job is to be the best pretend horse you can be, while hoping your other half is on the same page.

That's it. That's the game. And I was already mentally casting my players into this and the shenanigans they would get up to.

What makes it click is how the mechanics lean into the bit. Both players each roll a d6 for any action outside of a few preset abilities (and the dice have to land within one value of each other to succeed) as coordination between the front half and the back half of the ‘horse’ is not guaranteed. A Horse Tolerance Meter tracks how good of a job you are doing pretending to be a horse before too many people catch on and the game ends.

I believe that the single-page ruleset is the perfect amount for a comedy ttrpg like this. You don't want to spend an hour on character creation for a horse bit. This is the kind of game you pull out as a one-shot or when a needed player can’t make it, and it works precisely because it asks so little and delivers so much chaos.

View Horse Majeure on the wiki and grab it on itch.io