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Characters need help with magic, and they have money and fame, so they go to the head of the Mage Guild or whatever magic-user institution, and what do they find? A politician. I know, it might sound counter intuitive, but hear me out.

IRL dynamic in academic research

In real-world research universities, the department chair isn’t the brilliant researcher running experiments at 2 AM. Au contraire, they’re the person who figured out how to navigate faculty meetings, secure funding, and befriend all the different (and many times rival!) departmental claques, and maybe the staff union. The misanthropic nerd loner, 100% invested in advancing science? They’re probably in a windowless lab, avoiding committee assignments like the plague.

This structure replicates scaling down: Consider a research lab. The head professor spends time crafting a funding proposal (i.e., a sales pitch), plans the budget, deals with admins and bureaucracy; meanwhile, the students and postdocs that do not even know exactly from which project their salaries comes from are the ones developing the actual science.

Hospitals work in a similar way. The Chief of Surgery might spend more time in boardrooms than operating rooms to keep that title. Meanwhile, the surgeon who can perform miracles with a scalpel is scrubbing in for their fourth procedure of the day, muttering about “administrative nonsense”. Brilliant practitioners might find politics tedious, and self-promotion awkward and exhausting.

What if Magic guilds or schools mirror this dynamic?

I do see a strong parallel. The obsessive wizard who spent sleepless nights to craft a new spell probably hates dealing with apprentice applications and guild politics.

The person running your Mages’ Guild is likely someone who mastered the social game: Building alliances, managing resources, understanding what different factions want. They’re likely a competent spellcasters, sure, but their true talent lies in organization and influence. So when designing mage guilds and schools, I would factor this dynamic in.

When the players need help from the best mage to investigate the artifact they just snatched from that forlorn crypt, well, they can go to the master wizard and, disappointingly, find a politician. The master wizard is all worried about maintaining the status quo and the problems that the artifact can cause: How to report this discovery to the king? Wait, are there taxes to be paid on unearthed magic artifacts?, etc. The mage that the players need, the one that would obsess over the artifact and help them understand its powers and how to control it, is likely a foul-mouthed recluse loner (and super fun to play).

Original link and shameless plug, if you want to subscribe to my blog: https://open.substack.com/pub/kindofold/p/the-real-archmage-is-probably-not

(RPG contents for NSR, OSR, and PBTA systems; solo actual play; agile reviews of indie games; and very occasionaly, rants)

Thank you, Mod Team, for approval!

Hello, everyone! Meredith from DriveThruRPG!

⏱️ Over the last few months, 80 publishing partners (20 of them brand-new to publishing!) joined in our annual game jam, PocketQuest, with the theme of time travel! The publishers were challenged to make their own stand-alone game with the theme and create this in 25 pages or less. We had a blast in our Discord Community doing writing challenges, constructive critiques, playtesting, and more support from not only veteran publishers but ones doing it for the first time.

⏳ Some people chose going for more horror, some decided to use cards for mechanics, and one person even did a solo journaling adventure! There's so much variety in this year's submissions!

This week, those beautiful creations are released to the public!

🕰️ I wanted to take a moment to celebrate these creators on completing this game challenge and wanted to show off their work to all of you!

🎉 Please join me in celebrating them and if you'd like, checking out their submissions this year. Thank you for the space to support new creators on an extremely fun challenge.

You can see all PocketQuest submissions in the Newest Title Strip on DriveThruRPG in the PocketQuest filter here.

Looking for moderate crunch, not too much magic (although I'm not anti-magic), but most importantly it needs to have a different feel to the combat compared to the previously mentioned games.

(I have nothing against the titles mentioned. I just need something fresh Y'know)

I've been designing experimental RPGs in the Norwegian freeform scene since 2005. Archipelago, Society of Dreamers, a lot of weird stuff collected in a book called B-Sides. Soledad is where all of that led.

It started as a birthday present for a friend. I printed cards, laminated them, and put them in a metal chocolate box. We played it and got that feeling of discovery you get maybe once or twice in a long gaming career. Then I kept making games in the same system, and eventually an amazing publisher, NessunDove, picked it up. (You have to see their stuff, it's fantastic!)

The game is set in a forgotten South American village. Scene cards and Drama cards drive everything. No GM, no prep. You draw cards and they shape what happens. It supports full campaign play where each session picks up where the last one left off and the stories get more tangled over time.

There's a black kapok tree nobody talks about. Coffee plantations. People living with old secrets. And drama, oh wow, so much drama.

It launches tomorrow, May 7, on BackerKit as part of Pocketopia 2026.

Actual play video (full session with character creation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jciJsh_HQ_8

BackerKit campaign page: https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/53b0c4dc-bbf4-4925-b348-764f66904119/landing

Hope to see you there!

Don't really have a problem with 2020, do not like the other two, what's out there? Cy-borg is fun for a short amount of time but I grew quite tired of it quite quickly. Is there any cyberpunk ttrpgs you guys like? Anything interesting coming up?

Hello y'all! The title pretty much says it all. I personally fell in love with Destera after reading both Heart and Spire back to back. Its so unique and different and really threw me for a loop, especially as someone coming from the Forgotten Realms mainly. The setting is very expansive and Im really curious to hear what specific weird corners of the world speak to you. And also would love to know if you prefer the shadowy highs and lows of Spire or the wet meaty tunnels of the Heart!

I like giving my players direct access to books I use as a GM, but most books have game rules and math in them. I want to hand them books from my shelf that look like books their characters could gain access to, especially in pre-modern settings (historical, fantasy or retro-futuristic sci-fi).

Books of settings, spells, martial arts, monsters, mushrooms, food, cooking, drinks, architecture, culture, nature, etc.

I'm looking for something simple, for a 2-3 hour one shot. One page is perfectly fine. Basic idea is small group of people trying to fight back against over whelming force. Survival not required.

Was re-reading some old news about when the big boat Ever Given was stuck on the Suez Canal for like a week, and that gave me an idea to introduce it in an adventure.

Like, maybe the group family or friends are part of the boat's crew; there are raiders, pirates, terrorists, cultists or whatever wanting the cargo inside; depending on the situation, they need to make an agreement with a neighboring government to get some aid in the task; Etc.

It can be less serious stuff, like that news story of a crack head who gave himself to the police because he killed his imaginary friend and such stuff

Looking for an RPG system that is like the anime Eureka Seven. I guess you can say Gundam but largely not in space.

It would have mechs, not a lot of magic if any at all, and usable character options for non-mech pilots that can be used in combat.

I've only really played 5e/5.5e so I'm looking to branch out. Been hearing a lot about Lancer and also one called Armour Astor, if anyone has opinions on those.

Thanks in advance

As always, new is cool, and that’s alright. I started playing TTRPGs in 2018, with, of course, Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. Since then, I branched out, but right now I’m heavily invested in older games (80s, 90s, early 2000s). I don’t have time to play them, but I like to collect and read them.

Let’s have a post about those who have tried but now are rarely talked about.

The strange boxed sets gathering dust on a shelf. The systems with bold ideas that didn’t quite catch on. The games you stumbled into once, played for a summer, and never saw again but somehow you never forgot.

I like this era The 80s and 90s (even the early 2000s) were full of these experimental mechanics, bizarre settings, clunky rules.

So here’s a toast to those forgotten TTRPGs.

Which ones do you remember?
What made them special to you?
Was it the setting, the mechanics, the people you played with or just the right moment in time?

Let’s give them a little life again. xo

Tales from the Floating Vagabond Chaos and Comedy,

Tales from the Floating Vagabond is one of those forgotten RPGs that feels less like a controlled explosion of ideas.

Set around a bizarre interdimensional bar that pulls in characters from across time and space, the game thrives on absurdity. You can play anything a space mercenary, a cartoon creature, or something even less sensible and somehow it all works because the setting doesn’t care about logic, only momentum and jokes.

What really sells it, though, is how the mechanics lean into that chaos. The system uses the roll under your stat approach where success isn’t just about skill it’s about how ridiculous or entertaining your action is. Characters are built around over-the-top “Shticks,” which are less like balanced abilities and more like comedic superpowers that define how absurd you can get at the table.

There’s also a constant push toward escalation. The rules reward bold, exaggerated actions, and punish hesitation with failure or comedic disaster. It’s not designed for tight balance or realism instead, it actively encourages scenes to spiral out of control in the most entertaining way possible.

It’s not a game for long, serious campaigns. But as a chaotic, laughter-filled one-shot (or a short-lived campaign that spirals into madness),

Bonus one:

HoL (Human Occupied Landfill) Edgy and Chaotic

Human Occupied Landfill is pure, unapologetic chaos. The setting is a grotesque, over-the-top dystopia packed with violence, satire, and a kind of deliberately offensive humor that very much screams “90s edge.” It’s messsy, loud, and absurd.