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I'm curious what games based on existing franchises/Intellectual Properties.

List of one's I can think of off hand:

• Star Wars RPGs
• Warhammer 40k
• Warhammer Fantasy/Age of Sigmar
• Call of Cthluhu (not sure the history on the licensing)

I'd have added Through the Breach RPG to this, but looking online the latest supplements for it came out like a few years back and new ones haven't been made since around 2023, I could be wrong though. It used to be my go to recommendation because they made build your own steampunk model kits.

My criteria for successful Licensed TTRPG is:

• Must be directly based on a book/movie/game/tv show.
• The TTRPG can't have been made prior to the release of the original material.
• Tabletop other than TTRPGs count as non-TTRPG properties.
• The TTRPG must have be curently actively supported either via the company that owns it or fans. This can be a bit fuzzy, but perhaps a new product out within the last 6 months, showing that the game isn't abandoned.
• It doesn't matter if the TTRPG has gone through multiple editions or versions using different rules. (e.g. Warhammer 40k had the Fantasy Flight Games RPGs and now the current versions are "Wrath and Glory" and "Imperium Maledictum")

Any ones you all can think of?

Now I've been scouring the internet far and wide for a Zombie Apocalypse TTRPG and I think I settled on buying The Walking Dead TTRPG. But after looking at the reviews on blogs and such, it's really mixed. If anyone is able to give a overall review (Review the quality of Worldbuilding, System, Etc.) and then give their opinion, that'd be great

Hey folks,

I'm hoping you fine folks can help me. We just finished off a short campaign and are looking to move on to our next game. Our group tends to play a lot of dark fantasy, horror, or games with fairly heavy themes, but one of my mates said he needs a break from that sort of game. So I'm here looking for suggestions on something a bit more lighthearted and fun.

A friend suggested Brindlewood Bay and, while it is lovely, it's really not my vibe (and I'll probably be GM!). I was thinking of maybe The One Ring Starter Set where you play as hobbits, or maybe a more lighthearted Wildsea or Kids on Bikes? Any suggestions would be really welcome. Just something we can play for 3-5 sessions and have a bit of fun without worrying about getting murdered by nightmare abominations.

Cheers!

I am looking for systems that are reminiscent or take inspiration from the old epic fantasy films of the 60s and 70s like Jason and the argonauts or Ben hur. I’m not sure if this is really a thing that exists. I guess maybe barbarians of lemuria could work? I’m not sure

2 years ago, I dredged my memory for positive and negative takeaways from every RPG I had played up until that point. Being unable to predict the future, I stopped there... but I've been secretly editing that post ever since to maintain a personal log of RPGs played. I've accumulated enough new entries that I'm ready to share them on their own.

Several of these are games that I have, or intend to, post about individually. I always like reading actual-play posts and strive to contribute more of them.

• Mausritter, running the Vitacernis one-shot for friends.
  • Rose: Loved the fusion of Knave/Cairn/Into the Odd mechanics. Combat was fast and deadly. Inventory was fun to manage. The one-shot was fun.
  • Thorn: Without a lot of item variety or player creativity, I can see combat getting same-y.
• The Wildsea, running a campaign for friends. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: Unsetting questions. I often ask for player input, but "Tell me something that might be true" was really powerful. It gave me explicit permission to adjust player contributions, and let players contribute wild ideas without stressing about continuity up front.
  • Thorn: Playing in someone else's hyper-unique world was a miss for me. Too vast to internalize, too distinct to easily add to. The lack of obvious tropes didn't help.
• Alice is Missing, playing a session with the expansion characters on the official VTT.
  • Rose: The music. Also, text-based roleplaying actually let me get into character, which I struggle with in-person.
  • Thorn: Too freeform. A lot of plot threads never developed because other players didn't pick up on them. More mechanics to help the web of plots congeal would be nice.
• Monster of the Week again, this time GMing the Jeepers Creepers one-shot for friends.
  • Rose: The setup is wonderful for inspiring cool characters and groups. We had a whole secret society and cryptid podcast inside an hour.
  • Thorn: Combat. With so much focus on the mystery of "What's going on?" and "How do you defeat the threat?", compelling fights did not break out. Extra frustrating because many player abilities were focused on fights.
• Shadow of the Demon Lord, GMing the Dark Deeds in Last Hope and Dead by Dawn premades as 3-shots for 2 different groups. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: Boons and banes worked so well. The system overall strikes a sweet spot between lightweight and option-heavy. I would definitely try it again to replace D&D/PF for a campaign.
  • Thorn: Level 0. For a system with so many options, I don't understand why it encourages you to begin play with none of them. It was neat to let gameplay influence novice path choices, but not a worthwhile use of our limited gaming time.
• Triangle Agency, playing in a 4-shot micro campaign. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: A Legacy-esque TTRPG with its own cohesive mechanical identity. It felt very un-like D&D, and the mechanical differences were very well justified. If you want a legitimately new TTRPG experience, look here.
  • Thorn: Memory issues and PvP. So much player-facing material gets unlocked as you play that it accumulates into a bit of a tangled mess, difficult to reference. The system and setting also encourage a lot of diverging player agendas, which is great for some groups but not ours.
• Atma: A Roleplaying Card Game, playing in a 5-shot micro campaign.
  • Rose: I got to play my own game! But serious, the character variety remains a huge highlight. Lots of cool and unexpected pregens.
  • Thorn: Rotating characters every session prevents you from getting attached, even with an overarching plot. This was a nuance of how the micro-campaign was structured.
• Daggerheart, playing in a small campaign. Write-up coming soon.
  • Rose: Lots of fun character building options for what is ultimately a fairly lightweight, narrative RPG.
  • Thorn: Too many options to be streamlined, but not enough meaningful difference between options to be crunchy.
• Cosmere TTRPG, playing 6 sessions of the official Stonewalkers campaign. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: Making best-selling novels out of your campaign's setting is one way to ensure players have actually read and internalized it!
  • Thorn: All that official lore can lead to "story lawyers" and be a damper on improv.
• Castle Noth, running 2 playtests of a rogue-like Castlevania-like OSR module I wrote. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: This was hands-down the best time I've ever had running an RPG. All the joy of worldbuilding and improv (since I wrote it), and all the depth of a prepared module (since I wrote it ahead of time).
  • Thorn: Information density in the book is uncomfortably high, and font sizes/margins are uncomfortably small. I overdid it on trying to eliminate whitespace.
• The Quiet Year, playing a one-shot.
  • Rose: Very light but strong rules. The "1-2 sentences" restriction and contempt tokens are both doing heavy lifting to keep an otherwise freeform experience tightly on track.
  • Thorn: The mechanics don't help players break the habit of playing favorites, i.e. revisiting the topics that they themselves introduced and find most compelling.
• Microscope again, playing 5 sessions to prep a campaign world. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: Communal worldbuilding is amazing! We have a rich world that everyone's versed and vested in.
  • Thorn: 5 sessions worth of lore starts to burst at your mental seams.
• Brindlewood Bay, running a two-shot of premade mystery seeds from the rulebook. More thoughts here.
  • Rose: We really enjoyed the clue/theory system. The GM can throw clues out without thinking too hard, and the players get all the "Aha!" fun of devising a compelling solution that links them.
  • Thorn: Playing as old ladies was surprisingly hard. They aren't action heroes or authority figures, so "What can I do?" didn't equate to a lot of typical player actions. Also, the open-ended story seeds are neat but very sparse (by design); lots of gaps to fill in.
• Blades in the Dark again, running a weekly sandbox campaign in our communal Microscope setting.
  • Rose: I'm forcing myself to use Position/Effect this time, and I appreciate that it foregrounds the risk/reward prior to rolling. More than once, it's helped get everyone onto the same page.
  • Thorn: I still find the rulebook to be disorganized and occasionally vague.
• Cairn 2E, running the Rise of the Blood Olms one-shot on a whim.
  • Rose: Despite being new to Cairn, we rolled random characters and finished the session in 2 hours. Many one-shots fail to deliver that.
  • Thorn: Combat was very dry without the stunts from Castle Noth (AKA gambits from Mythic Bastionland). Combat felt like a failstate as a result, which was appropriate but not necessarily fun.

What about you?

I'm sorry if this is a repetitive topic or something like that. I looked at the wiki, researched some keywords in the sub and didn't find what I was looking for

I want something very specific. I like that tactical combat like in DnD and similar games, but I also want a game that is not JUST about combat

You can say "but DnD is not just about combat, you can do so much with it!" But when you actually look at the rules its like, investigation? Roll a skill dice. Negotiation? Roll a skill dice. Combat? Pages and pages of rules and even entire books dedicated to monsters for the players to kill

I want a heroic fantasy that dedicates more time to interesting social encounters, investigations (I know gumshoe, but then we have the opposite problem, where the combat is not very good. At least in the ones I know) and if it has mechanics that help you connect and interact with your backstory like the icons in 13th Age, even better!

I know we don't need mechanics to make these things interesting, but when the mechanics support the roleplay it feels so much better

Does such a system even exist? And if it does, does it work well or is it too convoluted?

Thank you in advance!

So, soon going to run a social/Game of Thrones-esque social/war game in Fate Core. I'm doing prep now; group and I have already discussed major themes and all that. There are five players in the group, and while characters have not been made yet, the group leans towards social and "intrigue" types, with one guy as a martial character probably, so perfect for this game.

Anyway, just as a question to the crowd - how many named NPCs do you usually prep for more social games? In the past, when I run such games (and I run them a lot) I usually try to have three "faces" per faction or organization I think will be important, usually typifying some aspect (hah!) of the group that I want players to see (for example, if I have a noble house, one NPC will be the heir that follows in their father's footsteps, another the brother that thinks this way is all wrong, and their court priest who wants to secure the house with some sort of noble marriage of said heir).

Which means, in a typical game, I might set up, say, 15-20 or so named NPCs. Don't do stats for them (maybe a handful); I generally do this on the fly at whatever level to challenge the PCs.

So how many do you prep? How in depth d you get?

Hi,

I’m looking to run an RPG based in the Deathlands series by James Axler; it’s actually multiple authors using that pen name but anyway…

Probably a long shot that someone else has read those books but regardless, I’m wanting to get some suggestions for TTRPGs that would fit that world. The PCs would be a team similar to Ryan Cawdor, Kristie, JB, Doc, Jack etc.

For those that aren’t familiar, to give a simplified idea it’s post apocalypse, nuclear war, where creatures and plant life are mutated, chem storms abound, weird and wonderful anomalies wait round every corner, and desperation reigns. Just before the ‘world ended’, there was experimentation into teleportation (think Star Trek transporters) and even time travel, albeit to a very limited extent.

I have heard about a few games that might fit, such as Earthdawn, Mutant Year Zero, Twilight 2000, Savage Worlds with Darwin’s World, Fallout obviously, Gamma World, or Ashes Without Number, but I only have experience with Savage Worlds and Mutant Year Zero.

So, what are your thoughts? Suggestions to look into? I know I don’t want GURPS, it’s just too ‘dry’ for me, I’ve tried a few times to get into it but can’t.

Im interested games that focus on things other then combat. Preferably where combat is not a mechanic at all. I get there are degrees of combat, blades in the dark, lancer, and DnD all have combat but timely different degrees and focus. What im interested in are games at the far end of the little to no combat side of the spectrum.

Thanks in advance.

I am aware this is very specific but Id thought I should try anyway

I've had the idea of GMing a game where players form a military unit responsible for exploring an abandoned facility or an impossible space, like a DND party would explore a dungeon in search of loot, or like those movies where a group of soldiers is sent to an isolated location ala Resident Evil 1, DOOM (2005), Aliens 2, etc.

I'm still trying to find a good system for it. My first thought was Delta Green, but I have no experience with d100 systems and it feels more geared towards "open" investigation than dungeon crawling. I also looked up Military game suggestion thread, and it seems most of them are either post-apoc, vietnam war, or WWI/WWII focused and that's not exactly what Im looking for

I usually prefer more FITD or PBTA style games but I'd be down for some crunchy grid-based map combat

I introduced my partner to DnD recently. We have been running through She really enjoyed doing tasks and exploring but she struggled with combat. From talking, it seems like shes not big on the idea of fighting.

Someone gifted us Wanderhome. It is very different from what im typically used to playing so im not sure if I want to take on that task while introducing a newbie.

Anyway, if anyone knows of some good duet rpgs or prewritten that dont involve as much combat, i would love some suggestions.