A new episode has been added to the database: Agents of the Inquisition - 2.04 - Motive and Opportunity

A new episode has been added to the database: PULP CTHULU: How to Play 2 - Character Creation

A new episode has been added to the database: S12E11 - Son Of A Haberdasher

A new episode has been added to the database: 21. The Grand Quest

A new episode has been added to the database: 389 - Actual Prep with Random Tropes

A new episode has been added to the database: [Ep. 252] Children of the Dead

A new episode has been added to the database: System Mastery 320 – Amazing Engine, Bughunters

by Bifford [White Hare Games] (Sam)

The Thursday Thing aims to highlight contests and other interesting things on RPG Geek.
Please Geekmail me suggestions and In My Own Words articles.


On Not Being Productive. Also, Zine Month.
by [username=Bifford]Bifford[/username]

I've not had any time to work on my projects this past week. I'm still working on the supplement for Tales of the Village which I want finished by the end of February. I can then move on to the next issue of Accessible Gaming Quarterly (if you have art about an accessible character, or an article for the mag I'd love to chat!) and after that the next issue of The Warlock Returns. Also an art book. Also a new part-time job which starts end Feb. As well as lots of other things.

Whew! That's a lot. I don't have time to not do anything for a week, and yet that's what just happened. I can partly blame going for the interview and filling in paperwork, but mostly I just could not get up the energy to work on anything. I must try to be better!

Despite all that, the business account is healthy for once thanks to seasonal sales, crafty bundle selling, and proofreading. Huzzah for building up a portfolio!

I am deliberatly steering clear of Zine Month! Way too much temptation. Mind you, when you see one item with a laughable goal of $60,000 for a PDF and DTRPG POD book.... ya gotta laugh at their idiocy. Most of them are more sensible with a few hundred $ goal. Good luck to them, but I've only browsed my previous purchases so there's no point buying more!



The Pay by Forum New Player Initiative is now live, and places are filling up fast! Anyone who has not played by forum on RPGGeek before can sign up now, those who have played here before can sign up on the 7th. What are you waiting for?
RPGGeek 2026 New Player Initiative (NPI) - Geeklist of Games!


A not entirely hopeless ALIEN adventure. Now there is a pitch! lol :D
Something I've run twice but not reviewed


Critical fail on disarming a bomb. Classic fail.
On Patrol



Every day there's a new Question of the Day. Most of them are game-related but once in a while we get one that'a more geek-related like favorite movies or books. The question changes every day and you can even suggest a QOTD. When you check out this week's Question of the Week, you can see a link to all the old questions and the chance to suggest a question of your own. Here's this week's QOTD:
QOTD FEB 2: What's your favorite system that you've never really gotten to play? (Something you like reading/the ideas of)


I'd forgotten all about this list, so I'm sure you have too. That, or you didn't know about it in the first place! Come introduce yourself by answering a few simple questions in a ten-year-old thread (geeklist)!
RPG Geek: Building Community


Here are some other things you might want to check out.
Geek of the Month is a chance to learn more about our community members.
Behind the Screen is an archive of advice by/for GMs written by our community.
RPG Spotlight Event Tracker focuses on questions and ideas for specific games.
Solo RPGs you have played - Jan 2026

European RPG - Heap of Generosity is the European "Pay it Forward" geeklist (you do not have to give something to receive!)
[US] RPGG Pay It Forward: Traditional List is for the US traditional swap of things (2026 edition).
[US] RPGG Pay It Forward: No Obligation List is for the US non-traditional swap/not of things (2026 edition).

Kickstarter RPG Game Books - 2026 details Kickstarter crowdfunding projects in 2026.
BackerKit RPG Projects details Backerkit crowdfunding projects 2021-2026.

Contest Subscription Thread is where we go to find contests on the RPG side.
2026 RPG Character Creation Challenge
2026 Run 5 RPGs New to You in 2026 Challenge
2026 Play 5 RPGs New to You in 2026 Challenge
2026 Ladder of Insanity
2026 Review Challenge

Banners are by the talented [username=pdzoch]Patrick[/username].

by leroy43

I, for one, welcome our new octopus overlords.

Way back in 1977, a young designer named Steve Jackson created a small pocket game, Ogre, for publisher MetaGaming. It became number 1 in a series of MicroGames that eventually included twenty five titles.

Number 3 in the series was a fighting game called Melee. Melee introduced a simple system using a hex grid, including the mega-hex, essentially a tile of seven hexagons, and your fighter had two stats - Strength (ST), and Dexterity (DX). The ST was both a measure of how tough you were, i.e. how many wounds you could take before dying, as well as how big a weapon you could carry. DX on the other hand determined who would go first, and how likely you would be to hit someone else.

The system was straightforward but not simple. Armour would reduce your effective DX, but armour also protected you from damage. Thrown weapons would add a negative modifier for the number of hexes it travelled, missile weapons like bows for the number of mega-hexes travelled.

Once you chose your stats and weapons, you were good to go, and the fight was on. You rolled 3d6 and if it was less than or equal to your modified DX, you would hit, and then you would roll damage based on the weapon you had. The opponent would then lost that many ST points, reduced by whatever armour they were wearing.

Number 6 in the series was a game about duelling mages called Wizard. This added the IQ stat, which governed how powerful a spell you could cast. The higher the IQ, the better the spell. However, casting a spell came at the cost of spending ST points. It was entirely in the realm of possibility that you could knock yourself unconscious.

Astute readers will see where this is going. Now that could make characters that could fight, supported by characters that could cast spells, and the emergent RPG phenomenon that was spreading around gaming tables everywhere, it made sense to add some systems rules for skills, monsters, and labyrinths. Enter Advanced Wizard, Advanced Melee, and In the Labyrinth, and voila, you have a role playing game.

MetaGaming shuttered in 1983, and it wasn’t until 2017 that Steve Jackson was able to reclaim the rights. A successful Kickstarter campaign later, the Legacy edition finally became available again for all to enjoy.

The core rulebook is a relatively modest 176 pages, including a very good index.

There’s an introduction to role playing. Key concepts are introduced, including high level instructions on how to run the game. Success rolls (typically 3d6 with any modifiers vs. the relevant stat), critical successes (3-5 on 3d6) vs. critical failures (16-18 on 3d6). Situational penalties often come in the form of adding a fourth or fifth die to the roll, making it exponentially harder to stay under your stat. There’s also a very well laid out succinct section on injury, fatigue, death, and healing. Life on Cidri, a mega-world so large that any GM can create any setting they want, can be nasty, brutish, and short for the careless player’s character.

The character creation process is laid out nicely too. Players can be a wizard or not a wizard, but there are no specific character classes. There are plenty of suggestions on how to build different flavours of fighters, which is expressed mostly through skill selection. Similarly, if you want to be a thief, ranger, scholar, or merchant (among others), there is scaffolding provided for you.

Wizards likewise have options on how they want to present in the game world. A combat mage will have a different portfolio of spells than wizardly thief.

And for the undecided, there’s a one page quick character generator on page 14 that will have you set up to go in under ten minutes.

There are several default options aside from humans, including elves, dwarves, halflings, and goblins. There are also orcs, prootwaddles (“quarrelsome, unruly, moronic little humanoids”), centaurs (great for navigating underground labyrinths, haha), giants (ditto), gargoyles (yes, really), reptile men (my personal favourite), and mermen. The latter probably ought to be discussed with the GM beforehand.

Once stats are sorted out, characters will then fill out their talents and/or spells. Your IQ stat tells you how many “points” you have available to allocate. Learning Knife for instance, is 1 point, but Acute Hearing is 2. Your IQ also determines which skills and spells are available to you. Wizards can learn any skill a hero can, but at twice the cost. Wizards can learn any spell for 1 point, but heroes will need to spend 3.

Once you’ve selected your stats, talents, and spells, you can then equip your character. Weapons need a certain ST to wield. Your ST also determines how much you can carry without penalty.

In short, everything is about trade offs. You need ST to wield things and carry things and absorb damage. You need DX to hit things and cast spells. You need IQ to learn spells and talents. And all three stats are used for various skill checks. No dump stats here, just hard choices.

Advancement in TFT comes through experience points (XP), and rather than levels, XP are spent like currency. You can use them to improve stats, learn a new spell or talent, add mana to your wizard staff, or buy a limited wish.

Boosting stats is good, because it pretty much instantly makes you better at the things you’re already good at. With a stat of 10, your odds of success on 3d6 is 50%. At 11 it’s 62.5%. Much better! You can use bigger weapons, hit more often, and access more talents and spells. That's because in a 3d6 system, most rolls cluster in the 9–12 range. Moving from 10 to 11 is huge because you are moving into the fatter part of the probability curve. In contrast to the flat 5% for a +1 on a d20, it’s a massive leap in reliability.

Learning a new spell or talent gives your character broader diversity and the ability to do more things. Try disarming a trap without the skill and see how it goes.

Again, hard choices.

A critique I have is talents and spells are sorted by IQ. All the spells you can learn at IQ 15, say, are all together, alphabetically. Which is fine when you’re creating your character, you can see your options at a glance. However, as a reference, it’s annoying. You know you want to look at the Staff IV spell, which ought to be under “S”, but it’s actually in the IQ 15 section.

Missing also is a skill web/tree with prerequisites laid out. There are player created resources out on the web in various places, or you can do it yourself, but it would have been nice. The index is excellent though. Still, nothing breaks the flow like needing to look something up quickly and having to cross reference.

The game suggests that a combined 40 stat points is about as good as any humanoid can get. A 40 point efficiently built fighter type will absolutely mop the floor in a tavern brawl, but will still get demolished by a dragon.

That is a refreshing aspects of TFT, a commitment to a human scale of problem solving. Because the power ceiling is kept intentionally low, the game avoids the escalation trap where characters eventually become untouchable demigods.

A legendary hero might only have ten more attribute points than a novice, meaning that while they are significantly more capable, they are never post-human. This provides a stable narrative environment where the stakes don't have to reach cosmic levels to remain interesting.

A well placed crossbow bolt or a pack of hungry wolves remains a credible threat even to a veteran, which allows the GM to focus on the drama of the situation rather than a mathematical arms race. You aren't trampling the world; you're just a very skilled person trying to survive a very dangerous one, and that makes every victory feel earned rather than inevitable.

Character creation, talents, spells, experience, money, and figuring out the environment players will be interacting with takes up about a third of the book. If you’re not adventuring, you’re working, and having a job will earn your money and might even earn your experience too.

A quirk of TFT is that everything is hex based, which has both advantages and disadvantages. A very cool thing about TFT is that it scales beautifully. A regional map can scale down to a local map, can scale village map, can scale down to a mega hex map. Your typical labyrinth map will use one hex = one mega-hex. Mega-hexes make for convenient visual scaling too. Area spells affect hexes or mega-hexes. Range increments for a bow shot are mega-hex based. It saves time (and arguments).

The problem rears its ugly head with third party tools for map making. Hexes for regions? Fine. For dungeons? 5’ squares. Maybe 10’ squares. But hexes are few and far between. It just means more work for the GM, but the shadow of D&D looms overwhelmingly large in the online mapping tools space.

The next quarter of the book is devoted to adventuring. How to deal with underground labyrinths. Noise, doors, traps, nuisance encounters. Never have slimes been so satisfying! There’s a mercifully short sample of play. And then there are the denizens of Cidri, from the humanoids, intelligent monsters, undead, all the way to water and plant creatures, and nuisance ones. This time the sectioning works for the GM looking things up. All the undead are together, all the nuisance creatures are together, no need to flip back and forth alphabetically.

The remainder of the book is basically split into a section on advanced combat and another on advanced magic. Advanced combat lays out in detail how to resolve kinetic encounters. At its heart, opposed groups make one initiative roll. The winner decides which group will move first. It’s often advantageous to move last, especially as facing and engagement are so important. Once all movement is complete, actions are resolved in adjusted DX order, with ties broken by whoever has the initiative that round.

This is at its core the Melee micro game, fully integrated into the larger ruleset, and to the extent relevant for the round by round action, Wizard systems are dropped into the combat engine. It works well. Just know that unlike some systems, combat can be very quick and very lethal. Running away or surrendering are completely rational actions!

The advanced magic section picks up where Wizard leaves off. The combat rules cover sequencing for a round; here it reminds wizards how to use their spells in combat situations, yes, but also how to use their spells to best effect. Illusions in TFT can kill you if you’re not careful. The different classes of spells matter, with thrown spells vs. conjured spells,

This is also where magic items creation rules are laid out, as well as magic items. Creating magic items is expensive, both in terms of time and money. There has been at least one post on a fan site demonstrating that the system as revised from the original version of TFT actually operates at a loss, once you figure out that you need to pay shop wizards their weekly keep, and the statistical failure rate from the rolls required to see if you succeed at making this potion or that item.

In my opinion, having magic item creation rules are necessary, yes, but they’re really only necessary for the GM. The GM is going to be the inventor/source of magic items in the game world, so understanding the process is important, yes, but the rest of it doesn’t really stand up to too much scrutiny.

The economics of magic item creation in TFT are highly immersive. If you run the numbers based on the revised rules, most shop wizards appear to be operating a nonprofit, or perhaps they are trust fund mages managing a very expensive hobby.

Between the weekly upkeep for assistants and the statistical likelihood of a potion exploding in your face, your average alchemist is one failed IQ check away from a fantasy foreclosure. Perhaps that explains why there are so many wizards delving in labyrinths, they need a cash infusion.

There’s a catalog of items magical and alchemical with pricing. Adjust accordingly.

Lastly, the book has a small village and a small surrounding area to get new GMs started.

Ultimately any RPG system needs to answer this core question: why would I want to play this?

For me, the answer is that it has elegant yet limited complexity. You will learn to care a lot about the probability tables for 3d6 bell curves, but you will also enjoy the simplicity of rolling and reacting to the results. It’s fast, intuitive, and stays out of the way of the story.

I also love that there’s always a risk of death. No, really. I’ve suffered through long Pathfinder sessions where I never once felt my character was at risk of anything. And I would have been really annoyed because character generation there is painfully involved. Here, I’m always one critical success hit from being roadkill. Your mileage may vary.

TFT: Where "certainty of death" isn't merely a brave movie quote,
it's a 3d6 statistical probability
One more thing I really like is that there aren’t rules for everything, and so either the player and GM can talk it through narratively, or the GM can make a call to have the player roll XD6 against the relevant stat. Quick, painless, the narrative moves forward.

If you’re tired of 400+ page rulebooks and power creep, the Fantasy Trip: Legacy Edition is a master class in economy of design. There’s enough crunch in the tactical portion to keep it interesting, and enough give in the system to let the GM make the campaign their own.

I call that a win-win.

by Lagnis

So Enter Hydra was once part of the playtest rules over on Roll20, now it is just a standalone free introductory adventure that you can pick up for free on DTRPG to get a PDF of it and also the maps and some tokens on Roll20 that also have been reworked with new final bosses.

The adventure itself is only one page more or less, eight in total, so there’s also some suggested heroes, some discussion about tactics from the bad guys and three Hydra stat-blocks and a map over the Howard & Maria Stark Center for something something, where the fight takes place.

The adventure itself is very straightforward. First the heroes get involved, either by already being Avengers (so everyone but Dracula) or by being there as new heroes looking to join, then they go to the building, they fight some Hydra agents and rescue some hostages, then the armored Hydra agents show up for a tougher fight. Once that is done there is a single check to be made out of combat to figure out what they were doing there.

[heading][/heading]
I have no issue with the fight part of this introductory adventure, first you fight some mooks to get a feel for the system and then you get a bit more of a challenge, that is all nice and done. The map is a good resource, the stat-blocks are okay, I think in an introductory adventure they should list what their various powers do so you would not have to check the book for it, might be a result of its Roll20 tie-in where you can click on the name to see a description if you have the rules there.
My main issue with this as an introductory adventure is that there is only one suggested check outside of combat, to interrogate one of the Hydra’s to find out what they were after. There is no looking for clues or other things suggested for non-combat and it only really shows off punching. But if you have the core book lying around this is an hour or two of punching and you will at least know how to punch stuff once it’s done. I am glad I still have the playtest version, as that end fight is much more fun.

This introductory adventure is getting a 4.5/10 for Not So Good from me.

by Alexandre Correia

Day 3315. January 28, 2026. Coimbra...

In my dreams, the wind sounded like children crying.

Violent and raging, more fit of frustration than a hurt pinkie. It took me a moment to realize the dream was half-real, the limbo pushed back by the force of nature outside our window. It wanted to get in, banging and kicking the shutters with more force than I'd ever heard in my whole life. The raw power of wind and rain was amazing, coming and going in ever-closer, ever-stronger gales of energy. For a moment, I doubted our very roof would hold. Every minute, anticipating the lamp post across the street would burst into our room through the window, seeking shelter in our beds.

All I could think of was the birds. How can they manage to hold on to their nests and trees against +200 km/h winds?

During a brief inhale of Storm Kristin, I heard my wife, also awake, also in awe, say she'd heard crying. Of course! I quickly got out of bed and headed to our 4-year-old's room, the house filled with the heavy-metal noise of nature's screaming her heart out, trying to get inside. He was awake - how could he not be? - crying and gripping his bed as if it might lift off with him.

Kristin's main show of force may have faded fifteen minutes later. But its imprint will stay with us far longer.

Kristin's path of destruction, by João Porfírio
With schools closed and no power in the house, Alice and I went outside after a quick, cold breakfast. The rain and wind had stopped. It felt almost like a pleasant winter morning. A sniff of Spring. Almost...

Under-construction walls had fallen, blocking roads. Metal warehouse roofs had curled up in an avant-garde metal sculptures of a snail shells. Trees? We saw many, scattered everywhere save on the ground where they'd lived for the last decade. Trash, fallen bins, flowerpots, and mangled plastic chairs littered the ground, over a thin layer of sticks and dry leaves. A wreck everywhere we looked.

Still, people were trying to go about their business. Brooms and chainsaws ran nonstop. Sirens, many sirens, in the distance. A line of customers to buy the few power generators in a drugstore.

In the days that followed, we would learn which places had suffered most. But that night, we had all listened to Kristin's howling fury.

⭐⭐⭐
One year ago: ...return to the shopping mall...One year later: N/A

[hr]Thank you. Like what you see here? Subscribe, tip, like... be bold, invite me for a coffee, bid for a game, and we'll plant a tree. Together. [microbadge=35061]

by Rachel

I'm fine. But today wasn't particularly helpful to recovering from my sinus infection.

Catch you all tomorrow.

-Rachel