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So this is a bit of a complaint based on something I observed but also something that needs to be discussed in my opinion.

In a lot of TTRPG shorts I hear about a player overcoming an obstacle by doing something that is later revealed to be part of a master plan. The most classic example is wizard asking to make someone a magical sword and then casting polymorph but there are many examples like a player constantly putting glyphs of warding on something to create a mini nuke and surprising the GM or doing a wordplay with a fae or a devil that the GM fails to see.

These scenarios ignore the fact that the GM has to know a players intent to make their plan part of the game. Yes I the GM missed the cue about the sword but if your character was planning to do that then it would be a deception roll to avoid the NPC feeling something is off. As a GM I may not have realized you built a nuke but a wizard using detect magic definitely will. I as the GM am not well versed with word plays but the devil blocking the way definitely is.

The point here is this. The fact that I'm dumb does not make an NPC dumb and I am going to be pissed if you try to trick me as the person instead of the NPC. As such if you have a master plan then declare what you're going for.

I just finished GMing my first session and it was everything I wanted. Fast character creation, easy to remember rules, fun! I've been dming d&d for so long that this was so refreshing! My players said they loved it too and they had fun, they want to continue. I couldn't be more satisfied... But what does the Stupefied condition do?

Picked this up the other day and immediately fell in love - full of my kind of whimsy and fun. For those unaware it's a relatively small megadungeon that has the vibe of a french haunted halloween mansion castle. Think skeletons playing poker, talking portraits, ghostly bartenders, that kind of thing.

The one thing I can't figure out is what system to use. I'm looking for an OSR system that'll functionally be plug and play. However, my issue is the class fantasy. I'd want to run this in 17th century France, meaning no magic and humans only. It seems most OSR systems are set up in a more classical D&D-verse. Does anyone have any recommendations for something that'll fit the fantasy closer?

What I like about this game is building a kingdom and having the players play an active role in doing so.

Meikyuu Kingdom is a kingdom building game where everything is a dungeon, even your own kingdom. Your "class" is basically your role in he kingdom. There's like king, knight, and ninja, it's wacky. There's even a whole job system with evolutions and stuff. You go adventure to gain citizens and money so that you can upgrade the kingdom and defend it.

The game itself is a 2d6 system with a cool crit/inspiration mechanic. It's really silly and the art is fun and anime af since it's a japanese game

I will probably end up running another game of it, but I am wondering if there's any other systems similar that aren't QUITE so one note.

I was thinking of trying to translate this into D&D just because that's what I and my friends mostly play and I think it would add a lot of fun that regular loot and treasure just don't provide.

BUT LIKE I SAID, I'm 100% open to other systems so don't give me that shit please.

I often have heard people dismissing D&D 4e by saying "its a MMO Tabletop RPG", a Videogame trying to be a TTRPG.

So I then bit the bullet and did a quick overlook through its pages, and I found some stuff that I can understand it turning people away:

• Mechanics with little flavor text
• Squares instead of Feets or Meters
• Classifications like "At-Will", "Per Encounter", "Daily" and other more gamey terms

But funnily enough, I also found some of these things in other games like 13th Age, so it isn't necessarily just a "Oops! Sorry, this will never happen again :3" and more so a "Its not everyones cup of tea, but other LOVE IT".

I for example, comming from a background of videogames & boardgames first, am very okay with most of these more gamefied mechanics, so long it makes for a good game, I'm okay! But even then, I prefer exact distances in Meters or abstract one like "Near/Far" or "behind the boulder/above the tree" over measuring everything in fictional quantities like Squares.

As a GM for 8+ years, I've grown to dislike D&D a lot. While I love running other TTRPG systems, D&D always feels like it's built against me having fun. It's like I have to take the system into my own hands and push against it in order to enjoy the system. That being said, this isn't just a venting post to spread D&D hate. I'm more interested in the GMs who really like or love D&D. I genuinely want to better understand what parts of the game keeps GMs coming back.

What do you love about the system specifically? Why do you run D&D over other systems? Do you ever get that "pushing against the system" feeling?

I’ve read Warlock! Traitor’s Edition and I really like its flavour, the alternative approach to professions, and its simplicity.

From reading the core rulebook, it seems to be an OSR game and, as far as I understand, it draws heavily on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

However, it seems to me that the game doesn’t really provide any specific guidance on how it is meant to be played.

Since I particularly enjoy dungeon crawling, I was wondering whether the game could work well with this style of play, even though it doesn’t seem to have specific rules for resource management, dungeon encounters, and so on.

Do any of you have experience using the game this way?

I'm planning on making a big homebrew campaign in the future (maybe distant future, but it's life). When thinking about "what should be the adventure?", specially since I'm very bad at making campaigns with little structure, I was seeing the release of Fire Emblem: Fortunes Weave + remembered some of my favorites stories and noticed "huh, I like Tournaments Arcs in stories... Sure! Why not make my own?".

So now I plan on making a full on campaign centered around a world spanning tournament!

But also, I want to try new games with my friends, because if not I'm probably going to use D&D 5.5e (with MANY added 3rd Party Supplements), Daggerheart or Tormenta20, which are some of my favorite games but also we have been playing them for a long time as of now.

For this game, I'm looking for:

• Heroic Fantasy: Me and my group love magic, swords, dragons and all that, also I envision the game being very heroic in themes.
• Tactical Combat Focused: The combat rules should have enough crunch to be the main course without being needlessly complex. No need for simulationism, the combat can be very gamey! No need for square grids, but map usage is important.
• Fun & Engaging Travel Rules: Again, not simulationist levels of resource management, but with enough meat on its bones for it to be the second most important part of the campaign.
• Rules for Diverse Downtime: Give the players stuff to do while taking a rest, stopping a bit. Crafting, bonding, training, starting projects, searching for info, meditating, etc.
• Mechanical Benefits for Social Bonds: Basically, ways for making Social encounters and little moments matter more, giving mechanical reawrds for trying to engage with the world (no need to be super complex, but something)

Not looking for:

• Simulationism: I'm looking for a more fiction first approach, for a game that can ignore one or another rules of reality if it means for a better experience.

Thrilled to have Mythborn included in the LitM-Related Projects To Check Out in today's update. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sonofoak/legend-in-the-mist-rpg/posts/4813279

I was halfway through my home LitM session tonight when the notification came through. Shared a big cheer with my artist Jules.

Mythborn: Heroes of Greek Myth is a Legend in the Mist setting book for players to help you create mythic heroes of ancient Greece.

We have started work on our second book for Nerrators Narrators.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/582626/Mythborn-Heroes-of-Greek-Myth

I want to lead with the fact that I know I must be doing something stupid or wrong.

The general idea (rumor, request, whatever) "hey, there's a mysterious animal over there, go find it." is a super common trope. But I can't find any good examples of published (small) adventures about it.

You know; "there's a unicorn in the woods", "there's a white stag over in Dunbar", "the irrigation canals have an alligator with a scorpion tail", "a poodle exhaling blue sparkles has been repeatedly reported in the Upper City".

I've tried adventurelookup, drivethrough, and tenfootpole, as well as generic web searching.

My needs are narrow. Low level, fantasy, and the animal shouldn't be especially aggressive (more mystery and less stopping destruction). But all I really need is a framework to hack, so an adventure doesn't need to fit my needs. OSR for preference, but my needs are less mechanical and more conceptual.

What I most wanted, what has been my mental block in creating it out of whole cloth, is ideas about clues or encounters the party can have while searching. So they can narrow the area, triangulate, or deduce its home.

My location is a suburb ish kind of place. Houses and trees, so a city or wild adventure might have useful things for me to work with.

What ideas I DO have: sightings/witnesses. paw prints. poop. I know the area it is in, and I know which building it is connected to.

What I don't know is how to make most of these parts actually work. Especially the witnesses. And I also don't know what I might be missing. And I don't know how it all fits together from a player perspective.

I am specifically talking about one shots at conventions, events, rpg clubs and stuff like that (no matter which system). It's not an issue at my own table and if it was, I could just talk to my friends about it.

But I have noticed that no matter what kind of character I am given (or quickly roll up) for one shots with strangers, I always end up playing the straight man to the bit. I don't mind that in principle, but being chaotic is fun and I'd love to do it at least some of the time. One shots are often a good opportunity for hightened chaos and comedy compared to a long term campaign in my experience, and I have played funny/chaotic/wild characters before. It's not like I can't do that.

It just seems like everybody else always goes off the rails harder and faster than I can, and I get kind of forced into the role of the sensible one. Because somebody needs to do it, right? Somebody needs to gently get the group back on track so that the adventure can happen, and somebody needs to be exasperated at the crazy antics of the chaos gremlins, that makes it funnier.

I've tried simply not doing it and just also being chaotic, but it ended up being less fun and almost kind of... awkward. People would comment "wow I wouldn't have expected your character to also be this stupid" or "that seems more like something [other character] would do". It felt like everybody had just already decided that my character is the one with the brain cell, or the group mom, or whatever you want to call it. Even if I intended to play a totally different kind of character.

And look, maybe this happens to me because of some trait I have that isn't just the fact that I'm a woman. (Like, I've heard that people with more GM experience often tend to be the character that keeps the plot moving when they are players, and I have done a lot of GMing.) But I do think it's probably partially because I'm a woman.

Has anybody else also felt like this? Do you have any ideas how I could try to counteract this trend?