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This post will stay stickied for (at least) the week-end. Please enjoy this space where you can talk about anything: your last game, your current project, your patreon, etc. You can even talk about video games, ask for a group, or post a survey or share a new meme you've just found. This is the place for small talk on r/rpg.

The off-topic rules may not apply here, but the other rules still do. This is less the Wild West and more the Mild West. Don't be a jerk.

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^{Disclaimer: I was sort-of involved in the creation of this, in terms of giving feedback and proofreading things and the like.}

After months of work, the Community Edition of the cinematic fantasy RPG Grimwild is now complete and fully available, for free digitally (via Itch.io and RPG Trader), and as a paid print-on-demand hardcover book (via Lulu and RPG Trader) around mid-November once the test prints come in.

If you're familiar with the original game, here's a quick rundown of what to expect:

• New layout and organization of the text

• The original rules have been elaborated upon more, with additional play examples and clarifications of how to apply them

• Some rules have been simplified or reworked, including harm and potency

• Many path talents were rebalanced and changed, though old versions remain available as legacy options

• Content from the paid edition of the game (such as extra paths and group-building questions) is dispersed and integrated throughout the whole book instead of relegated to a single chapter in the back

• Some new rules and options (new paths like the Summoner and Witch, expanded downtime in the exploration chapter, and optional rules like level 0 characters)

• New replacement artwork from Per Janke, the same artist who illustrated the original game

For a more complete changelog, go here.

Story time!

Grimwild originally came out in 2025, created by J.D. Maxwell of Oddity Press. Its pitch was simple: a mix of D&D-style classes, monsters, magic items, and adventures, all running on a modern, cinematic-minded rules framework, inspired by games like Blades in the Dark, Fate, and Cortex Prime.

It was kind of a surprise hit, with many articles and reviews praising its design and execution, it won an ENNIE, and was well on the way to becoming the next big indie RPG...

... And then J.D. Maxwell essentially disappeared. While the digital version of the game was finished, the hardcover print run was never delivered to the BackerKit backers, and no contact was made with the author after around mid-2025, despite many various attempts and methods.

It's still not clear what happened to him exactly, with theories ranging from simple burnout to scamming people to something as dark as an actual death. Unfortunately, we may never know.

Nonetheless, there was a silver lining - the game's community stuck around and continued to play Grimwild, and in that process found some things that could have been improved in the original text. Luckily, Grimwild was licensed under Creative Commons, allowing anyone to take the game and do pretty much whatever they wanted.

And so, starting in late 2025, Grimwild's most ardent fans began working on the Community Edition, collaboratively going over every part of the text, with lots of ideas being thrown around and considered, but ultimately a direction was chosen, to be a refinement and additive improvement of of the original game, rather than a drastic departure. Over time, preview versions started to roll out (courtesy of Chancey "Groov" Scott, who kind of became the de facto lead developer on the project), and the Community Edition began to take shape.

Additionally, while the original text of the game was freely-licensed, Per Janke's artwork was not; regardless, the community pooled together some money to reach out to Per to commission some extra new cover and interior art for the Community Edition, a cherry on top of the whole affair.

And now, the full thing is ready to go - freely available for anyone to play with and build upon further, a new chapter in the story of Grimwild. Whether you're an existing Grimwild fan, somebody who bounced off the original version, or checking it out for the first time, hopefully you'll appreciate the tweaks, clarifications, and fine-tuning that went into it all!

So my players rarely roleplay. I will take a lot of the blame for it because I hold their hands a lot. We've played DnD for the longest and while we all loved our campaign, it played like a video game with dialogue options instead of free roleplaying.

My players also never drive the narrative forward. They have to be given "A or B" instead of coming up with a solution. They are very passive instead of active players.

I want a system where the players actually enjoy roleplaying (and there is some guidance for it).

Stuff where there's little or nothing supernatural going on, but everything is weird enough to convince people that some specific supernatural thing is going on but there's a real explanation. Thinking the kinda stuff you hear about in unaolved yt mysteries that ofc have real life solutions but seem impossible. Horror premise to throw players off. Payoff must actually be satifying and have an oh shit moment. Open to any system and adventure!

As I get older, I find that I have little to no time for statting out adversaries or monsters. I'm always prepping here and there, but procedurally creating the people or things to fight always takes the greatest effort and time of that prep work.

That said, I'm looking for more non-fantasy games to branch out to that have statblocks already prepared. Why non-fantasy? Because between OSR and 5e and DCC I have enough fantasy systems to run for the rest of my life. I finished an Essence20 campaign in April and loved it; I love Dark Heresy 1e; I don't play or run in Call of Cthulhu but I'm in love with BRP:UGE and its recent Creatures book.

Hi everyone, I’m Willy, a French GM. I’ve played and run D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu and more, and loved them all, but something was always missing for me. So I built my own game, Destynéa, starting from Giffyglyph’s QuickQuest. Two years of sessions later, it’s a system of its own. I'm so excited to share it with you today!

What it does differently at the table:

- d100 roll-under: 45 on your sheet means a 45% chance.
- No initiative rolls, no damage rolls, no armor class. When you’re hit, you parry, dodge or endure to halve the damage.
- Exploits cost HP instead of mana, so every use is a choice.
- Karma coins: your first failed roll in a scene earns a bonus for later.
- Fantasy by default, but it works just as well for a western, a cyberpunk story or a space opera.

The quickstart has 29 pages of rules, six pre-made characters with form-fillable sheets and The Ternauve Detour, a 2-hour adventure for 2 to 6 players. It’s pay what you want, and free is fine.

Disclosure: the English text was translated with AI assistance and reviewed by me. All the art is by human artists. If anything reads awkwardly, please tell me.

itch.io: https://kiimlee.itch.io/destynea-quickstart-rules
DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/591222

I’d love feedback, especially from anyone who plays it.

Let me give some examples.

- The "Everyone is a dick" storyteller

I had some annoying (but respectable) DMs when it was about chatting with NPCs, for some reason MOST of them were assholes or annoyed guys who just can't tolerate that our characters breath without purpose. I can understand a Gordon Ramsay chef who looks like Ryan Gosling being stressed about a missing ingredient when a food critic could arrive at any moment, the situation gives a more than perfect scenario to let him react like that, but dear lord some DMs of the very same server behave like if being hostile with the players made their NPCs interesting, I don't need dwarves shitting on me for asking if they wanted help to push something.

- The one being too permissive

This is a short one, I don't want to touch themes way too sensitive on this post, but let me resume it as "dude, why did you let him name his character Nate Higgers?"

Same server as the previous one, I left that discord a month later. If there's a problematic guy and no one raises an eye, don't put hopes in that place.

- The critical fumbles lover

One thing is failing a skill and another is just roll a one, throw a dice to decide your punishment, and then roll your instant death. Yeah, Conan the level 20 barbarian decapited himself with his own axe while trying to hit a tree.

That. Fucking. SUCKS.

There are other versions that just hurt yourself or others and that's it, but dear lord it still feels frustrating. It can even humilliate bosses and villains with a bad roll, missing is one thing but if the dark warrior that we heard during the campaign finally faces us and the first thing he does is stab his own rib during combat, everyone would assume that we found a fraud and the atmosphere gets harmed. If you try to say that nothing happened, everyone will call out that bullshit of a ruling, making it exclusive to anyone but bosses would make it unfair. Either everyone suffers or just don't.

I don't think I would need to explain how much this harm martials classes too.

Throw me another kinds of DMs that annoy you.

I recently got Obsidian with the Sync Plus plan, and holy shit is it formidable. It was a bit intimidating at first, but I spent most of a day educating myself on the syntax and how to formulate different things, which community plug-ins would help the most, what structure I should use for my vault(s), etc. I started with a vault dedicated to CoC and got to work.

For the one-shot I prepped for, I started with an introduction page with pertinent general information, internal links for locations, important NPC‘s, PCs, and key items and artifacts. I created templates for all those categories, and I ended up writing whole damn pages of notes for every location and main NPC!

I’ve written about this before here, but the thing I’m most self-conscious about when I GM is “dead air” when I have to pause the game to look something up or try to come up with something on the fly. Well, in the session I just ran on Discord there was no dead air. I was able to follow everything and react to the players’ actions seamlessly, since I could just click through internal links in my Obsidian vault and instantly find what I need. I had all my relevant skill checks and SAN checks listed at every location.

And that’s when I needed to remember something! All this prep, locked a lot of it in my brain. I really was on a roll and I could tell that the players were having a great time!

The only problem is, it TOOK FOREVER. Not counting the time it took me to get the hang of Obsidian, it took me about 9 days of all my free time to get all this plotted and written down. And again it was from a published module. 9 days for a one-shot! A one shot that we wrapped up in less than 4 hours.

I don’t know what kind of advice I’m looking for, but I’d like to find some kind of balance for prep. I don’t want to only run 1 one-shot every 2 weeks because of prep bloat.

EDIT: I should add that one of those prep days was spent making handouts on the Cthulhu Handout Generator website.

I’ve been rereading a couple of The Witcher novels and I’m now looking for a system to sink my teeth in, that would do a game fairly well in this setting (or similar).

I know of the official game and the.. middling reviews, so I’m looking for an alternative. Something dark fantasy with an interesting bestiary, asymmetrical fights with a bit of crunch and maybe even subsystems for alchemy and magic.

I was considering GURPS, but I think the point based system for NPC/monster generation would be time intensive as a GM to prep for.

Just a post on what I've been playing, with short 'reviewlets' of Forbidden Lands, Heart, Alien, Mothership and Brindlewood Bay. First impressions, rickety opinions and further plans.

https://www.trentjswindells.com/blog/five-months-five-games

Typically, for me, I try to aim for 3 encounters/scenes. An introduction where players introduce their characters and they are briefed on the mission/quest. Then an investigation/Social encounter that leads them to the final encounter, usually a Combat encounter unless they are aiming for diplomacy.

In a perfect world this would be 30 minutes for intro, 1h for investigatio /Social, 1 hour for Combat. With the last 30 minutes for wiggle room/a conclusion scene.

Most of the time I end up with 1.5 hours of intro, 30m of Investigation/Social, and 1h of Combat. 😅

Hello everyone!

I'm currently doing a bit of a deep dive on this interesting time and game system that had such a short life. Might be making a video on it.

I was wondering how the general zeitgeist of ttrpg players felt about it. Have you ever tried it? Have you heard of it but what you heard made you steer clear of it? Are you relatively new but would like to try it at some point? Have you played it and did you like it or not?

I would love to hear people share their thoughts on this overlooked time in D&D's history. If you have any personal stories of your time with it I would love to hear that as well.

Thank you all for your time! I can't wait to read what you got for me.

Edit: Thank you all for the amazing responses. I am doing my best to read them all. Also thank you all for the great discussions!