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I’ve made a few games for me and my friends and I’m working on a new one (not a promotion just for context on what got me thinking about this, everything I do/make is just for me and a few friends I don’t post or share it), but the more I look at it the more I’m unsure if these even constitute being a TTRPG.

I very rarely utilize or create social systems (as I’ve always viewed such things to be something that should be handled in RP) but I dive very heavily and deep into combat, wounds and survival mechanics. I still have a story they playthrough and such but with the lack of clear cut social systems I’m curious as to what exactly differentiates the TTRPG and the Wargame for you guys? I’m not so sure myself anymore. I’ve never really felt the need for a system to dictate anything outside of combat since it’s always just been role played out.

The satirical newspaper (and national treasure) The Onion published a piece yesterday (Sept 18, 2026), titled, "Olivia Rodrigo Releases Fantasy Tabletop Game ‘The High Winter Elves Of Girlville’".

My immediate reaction to reading this was laughter. My second one, though, was this: I want to play this game! Well, the game is fictional, so... I made it myself!

@drgwenmarshall.bsky.social: The Onion ran this amazing article and thought, I wanna play this! So I made it! 38 pps, PbtA, plus every mechanic mentioned in the article, and a bunch of Rodrigo song references. And it's free! Enjoy!

I apologize in advance as I suspect, similar questions are asked every week.

I started playing DnD 5e (2014) with my kids like 2-3 years ago. We picked up the humblewood-setting and played through the first book while I expanded the lore for us to keep on playing after the story is over. They are now lvl 8 and we are starting to explore firnveldt which is somewhat described in beyond the canopy (essentially humblewood 2).

Now onto the problem: My oldest (12) has mild autism and the fights are getting to him with frequent meltdowns in the last sessions. I have upped the game a little bit as they were advancing in levels and I started to present problems with less obvious solutions. My youngest (9) has no problem with it, adopting to different situations with surprisingly creative use of spells etc.

As a solution to the obviously stressful fights I was thinking on reducing the fights, going more storydriven. But DnD is designed for fights so I was thinking on using another system.
I would like to keep playing in this world, also keeping their characters and what they represent while using another ruleset and adapting the chars to it.

But its really a jungle out there with so much systems, that its really hard to find what I am looking for. Can somebody point me to a system that makes it possible to keep playing with an artificer, warlock/fighter and druid - at least in spirit?
The system should be favourable for exploration and interactions while being light on the fighting rules.

Tbh I was thinking that daggerheart might be a solution, but probably only because of my ignorance and not knowing about other systems.
Feel free to ask me questions if my incoherent thoughts here keep you wondering what the hell I acutally want.

My table is stuck on PF1e.

I tried to transition to PF2e in 2022 and no one wanted to buy in. I admit, those 2 systems are very different mechanically.

I didn't think they were so different that I would get so much pushback over the change. It was almost a full scale revolt.

What system caused your players to just say "Absolultely not?"

And more importantly, how did you manage to overcome the pushback?

I’m running a dnd 5e spy campaign and am looking for already established systems that cover the theme. I have homebrewed a Conspicuousness system that makes detection likelier based on how much of an outlier they appear as and adjusts CHA attempts, Evasion, and witness recollection based upon that. Are there any other systems in place that covers clandestine chicanery in an urban setting?

GMs, what drives you the most crazy during a session? Like when everything comes to a standstill having to stop to look up a rule in the book, forgetting how a mechanic works, a player asking something you can’t remember off the top of your head... I want to know the moments that annoy you the most during a typical session

I’m looking for games that have the players roll everything and the GM never rolls, or does rarely. I’m familiar with PbtA, FitD, the Mist Engine, and Cypher. Are there any others I should check out?

Hi im new here but ive been playing with dnd and other systems for years now. Besides playing dnd weekly i do stuff like Delta Green biweekly and sometimes Call of Cthulhu, The One Ring and bla bla bla

While waiting on my physical copy of Fabula Ultima’s core rulebook, i saw the Invincible RPG being half off on DriveThruRPG and bought it cus hey i like Invincible and Capeshit in general

Read through the whole thing and all i can say is woah my god wow. The system even without the Invincible branding is so broad and flexible you could make literally any hero/super power archetype work. Hell i coulde easily see people make stuff like a JJK campaign out of this for example (as an anime fan)

I am making this post to basically ask…whats up? Are there flaws i dont know about? Is it secretly hard to run or something? Or is the Invincible branding holding it down

Looking for opinions, not picking a fight. I think we should all play the kinds of games we like and play them how we like. That said, after talking with some friends, I'm feeling out whether my opinion is unpopular.

I prefer games that are just one book. I started playing RPGs very casually in 1999 but actually got into the hobby properly in 2005 with D&D 3.X. I ran a weekly game (that is technically still running) in that system until Pathfinder came out and then played that until we switched over to a homebrew system that we still play weekly.

I own nearly every 1st party book for 3.X physically and have, I kid you not, thousands of d20/OGL compatible 3rd part ebooks that I no longer play We used content from most of them during the 3.X/Pathfinder phase of our game. I couldn't get enough of the supplements! So I'm not saying I don't get the appeal.

I've played well over 100 RPGs now at this point and find I gravitate to the "everything in one book" approach. Generally rules-lite, no adventure books, no slat books or supplements, the GM and player rules are all right there. I live for these kinds of games (or at the very least, if the game does get a supplement or two, they are so optional I would never need to touch them... *cough* BitD).

Here's where I'm confused, though. I still have friends who play D&D. Nearly all of them treat wherever new supplement as if it's mandatory. I've even seen some of them get frustrated if a GM says they can't use a specific book for their specific campaign. It's just wild to me.

They can't wrap their head around a book that has everything in it. Some refuse to even try and others act as though these kinds of games can only do one-shots as they don't have enough "content" for long-term play.

Like, come on! The "content" is your imagination, right?! I have other friends who won't play without an adventure module at all and act as though a GM planning a session or doing improv isn't "official" enough.

I feel like I just can't get behind the whole "game as content" thing. Like, it's one of the reasons I pretty much only play indie video games too.

So what say you all? I know this is too much thought/text for something inconsequential (it doesn't but me, I swear) I just wanted to get a convo started and see what people think on the matter.

If there's one thing I've learned since coming into the TTRPG space, it is that there are a lot of publishers, who have a reputation around them. Of course, if there's one other thing I've learned about TTRPGs, it's that opinions can be very divided, and claims can spread widely around without the necessary context or nuance-I've really appreciated that so many folks here are willing to offer feedback and context when it's been needed.

Still, I've seen a few reputations that really seem to stick around. Stuff like WOTC/Hasbro being pretty greedy/player unfriendly, Paizo being very supportive of their playerbase, White Wolf being made up of Edgelords throughout the 2000s, Catalyst having editing issues, Free League being pretty universally admired as a third party publisher. That sort of thing. But there are publishers I don't know much about, Modephius, Necrotic Gnome, Cubicle 7, etc, etc. As someone whose lacking in a broader knowledge base, I really want to expand it by learning what I can about specific publishers.

I'm really interested in this, seeing what kind of reputation each publisher has with the community broadly, what earned them that reputation, and whether folks who have experience with that publisher's systems feel it's an accurate reputation or not.

Itchio seems to be full of these kinds of games.

When I say artsy I mean it in the sense that there's a subgenre of punk music called art punk.

complex yet elegant structures, unorthodox presentation, esoteric influences from other genres, and very uncompromising in message while still being elegant.

SUZi is a pretty dramatic example. Its a game completely centered around customizing a robot woman so that she'll fall apart as soon as possible, freeing her from forced servitude and dehumanization.

Dream Askew and Dream Apart both count to in my opinion.

But just think of RPGs which go super heavy into a specific narrative that's not fun in the conventional sense of the word but are very creative and impactful.

What makes a good ArtRPG?

What are the downsides?