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As a fan of Tolkien, nothing would make me happier than to run games in this setting. But, I feel uninspired due to some innate constraints.

Compared to high-fantasy worlds of D&D, Daggerheart, and so on ... my impression is there is less monster variety and certainly less PC/NPC available magic in the world. Which in my mind translated to - I can't have an adventure to go kill an evil dragon/wizard/monster.

And I'm looking for advice on how to go around this.

One idea is to have the adventure set in the 1st or 2nd age. Find a place and time where I can have as much or as little tie-ins with Silmarillion stuff as I wish.

But what if I wanted to play in the 3rd or 4th age, what then?

Clearing Moria and facing some Nameless thing would be an option for a shorter adventure, but for a longer thing I suspect it might get stale.

Resurrecting Sauron or the Witch-king?

Monsters variety would be limited to wights, wargs, trolls, spiders maybe? No magic-weilders to fight anywhere.

Let's say I cover all this in one adventure and it's great - what about a second adventure?

Someone in an RPG Discord I'm in posted about Ruin Reborn, a BackerKit campaign they thought looked promising:

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/authocracy/ruin-reborn-collector-s-edition-ttrpg

The page notes that the game is "human-made," with the corresponding logo, and includes a prominent section about the game's artist, noting that:

It makes the world of difference in an age of rampant AI to see human creativity flourishing. So thank you, first and foremost from us here, who insist on doing stuff the old fashioned way.

I didn't realize until later that that section was added after the campaign launched, in response to someone asking (in the BackerKit comments), "Was AI used at any point?" But I hadn't seen that yet, and only started to suspect anything after downloading the quickstart, and seeing images that screamed AI slop.

The artist's ArtStation and DeviantArt portfolios are what nailed it for me. On ArtStation, which has cracked down on AI art, his illos are decent (certainly better than anything I could do), but pretty hazy and rough. On DeviantArt, most of the images are in the same vein, but some are oddly crisp and absolutely AI-faced. And if you check out the Ruin Reborn QS you'll see a similar mix. Some stuff that definitely looks like a person made it, and then a bunch of portraits that are AI as hell.

So what's the point of me trying to snitch on a BackerKit project and artist?

First, I'm curious how BackerKit or anyone else can enforce their AI policies in cases where the use of AI isn't completely obvious. The content on the Ruin Reborn BackerKit campaign page isn't as suspect as what's in the Quickstart, so we can't really expect them to dig to that degree, including checking out an artist's material on other sites.

And second, I'm concerned about "human-made" claims being diluted and ultimately useless, given that we're strictly on the honor system. If a creator can just lie about that, even going so far as to slap the logo onto their project, and we can't expect a platform like BackerKit to enforce anything, what's the point?

None of this is rhetorical. I'm genuinely wondering what solutions the hobby should pursue, rather than just shrugging and mumbling about the inevitability of slop.

Now I was looking at some new TTRPGs for my group to try, and in this search I came across Vaesen, which looked like a very good game for my group. Most of the players I showed Vaesen to thought it look good, but one was unwilling to try it, as of the artwork and whole folklore element. Now I think that this particular player would enjoy the game a lot, but their not giving it a try. I don't want to harass them into playing, but I also think that they would very much enjoyed it if they gave it a try. I was wondering if anyone has any tips on solving stuff like this in a manner which doesn't come off as pushy or aggressive. If anyone has any tips, please comment!

Now I know barely anything about Kult, and neither do my players. I just finished massive Mothership campaign and everyone, including me, want to take a break from Mothership. So I was browsing and buying some horror TTRPGs to try out with my players (Mork Börg, Vaesen and Etc.) and I came across Kult. To my knowledge, it's some sort of Religious, Dark Urban and Psychological TTRPG set in either a Modern, 1920s or Concrete Megastructure city. Now I was wondering on if somebody could tell me more about it, if there's any lore to it I know or just general tips or suggestions. If you do have any of these, please tell me.

Hello everyone,

though still stuck on 3.5e, I am constantly checking new systems that dont have the same problems as that old dnd version. Spell imbalance, buff stacking and everything above Lv8 becomes a pain to run as a DM.

After looking into a lot of games, my current favorites are

Pathfinder 2E - It feels familiar to 3.e, many things are similar, but overall with better rules, balance etc. While having more customization than 5e, which some players tested and found it to be too semi or bland. Only downside is that it takes some time to get into with all the variables, degrees of success can be a bit of a drag too.

Shadow of the weird wizard.
An improved version of 5e as I undersand it.
+Boons/Banes makes it really easy to modify
PC builds should be very flexibel since there are no fixed classes

I ran a presentation for my players and they seemed open to both, but PF2E felt a lot closer to what they already know. If it was open to them, we would play 3.5e forever or even older systems. The problem is that I would have to run that - which I wont. ^^

I didnt get to play both systems yet. So I would like to hear some feedback from you guys.
What is your experience with PF2E vs SotwW? Can you say something about each?
How easy is it to run, to modify etc. ?

I havent seen any actual gameplay for SotwW on YT as of yet, or havent found it.

I'm thinking about running a duet campaign with a single player where i GM and they play a necromancer. I want it to be fantasy and support slowly creating an army of undead, idealy getting stronger undead the more the player levels up. If you have an rpg that fits i would love to hear about it, but even if it's not a perfect match i would love to read about your favorite implementation of a necromancer, maybe i will design my own class based on those.

Recently im really into fast and furious, need for speed and a lot of car racing things. I like to have a lot of cool/strange/different ideas for oneshots or maybe short campaingns, and i wanted to have something about cars.

I was looking for a thing really focused on the cars with customization, tuning etc, maybe with some little things for the pilot/ the car, like special abilities or something like that. More pushed into the action of the races, but with some margin to explore things out of the races (like gang fights maybe?).

Im sure i can get this things with some basic homebrewing and car knowledge, but if there is a system like that it would be great. I looked into some systems and discovered a game called Final lap, it seems cool but havent studied it yet.

I want to know if yall know any game with that sort of aspects.

hey everyone just got a quick question so me and my gf really like mechs and want to play a rpg/ttrpg about them but something more like gloomhaven where its less selfguided and has a story as we dont really want to dm is there anything like that i couldnt find much. thank yal so much

For brief, one of my players sent an… overly complicated backstory for a level one rogue. I don’t want to dampen her enthusiasm, but I do want to help her make the character’s backstory more suitable for the setting and for level one. any tip?

I played Descend Into Avernus recently and couldn't handle it.