**Come here and talk about anything!**

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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This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

**Come here and talk about anything!**

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.

----------

This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

Like the minute it was announced with star wars and WoW it just clicked and answered every question I had about this. I know essence 20 isn’t particularly popular on this subreddit but as someone who really enjoyed the line and thought it fixed a lot of issues I had with 5e it just hurts even more to know that it’s just to make more slop for dnd beyond. Even ignoring just how much none of the settings actually fit into 5.5e frame of character creation it just sucks to lose someone to corporate greed and as someone who primarily played the power rangers line I’m not even garenteed anything as we only get it if gi Joe and transformers does well. And we never got the magic sourcebook that was teased at the end of the monster manual for power rangers instead I get a maybe on a second edition of porting the game to a worse system. Fuck this man I’m just tired and beat

Dungeon crawls usually have a lot of violence (especially CRPGs), but I'm looking for a dungeon crawl with low or no violence. Basically, something that is going to have a lot of the same feelings and vibes but just without violence and combat.

Note: I know lots of OSR games that treat combat as a failure state / fallback position when other methods fail. For purposes of this question, I'd like to exclude that from this question as being part of the low-violence category. (They're fun but I've got a ton of those already.)

EDIT: For clarification, I'm fine with traps and other similar types of dangers. In real life, a trap that shoots spears at whoever passes would be violence; for this question, I'm not.

Hi there! I have recently been struggling with pacing, I feel like I take too long when introducing plot lines or just spending hours in interactions. I mean, players don't have any complaints but I personally feel like after weeks I barely have moved on in the great scheme of things. Anyone else with this issue?

I'm a new storyteller/GM for VtM 5e, Pathfinder, and Starfinder. I've done tutorial campaigns for MoTW and Marvel Multiverse before with the same playgroup. And something I've realized is that my friends/only playgroup are very chaotic, and quickly turn any campaign into a comedy. And..I love it.

As hard as it can make things sometimes, I love the absolute insanity of it all. While I'm struggling to read the rules, they're bickering in character or finding...creative solutions to failed roles. It's honestly a lot of fun, and I don't want to discourage that in the future.

But I am a new GM as I said, and I can struggle to keep the story on track, even when reading from a sourcebook or tutorial. I wanna make my own campaigns one day, but I am nervous I won't be able to keep up or guide my players because I'll have made a very railroad campaign that can't handle going off the rails. (I know being a DM involved improvisation though.)

So for more experienced playgroups who also have a playgroup that can be chaotic and goofy (affectionately.) how do you develop your own campaigns when things can go off the rails? Either tonally or just the players somehow fumbling every clue you lay out for them? I really want to make sure I can host in a way that supports my friends, so I'd appreciate some feedback ^^

Just like the title says. Are you a pen and paper note take or do you use digital tools? Laptops or recordings? Or do you leave the notes up to the players?

I had someone say in my game that they didn't know something was going to be important which is what made me think of this.

I take detailed notes but I also expect my players to take notes so its not on me to constantly remind them.

PS I also give them access to a pretty detailed recap.

I'm on a quest to find a grimdark cyberpunk ttrpg that takes place mainly in space. I love worlds that are unpleasant to live in, cyberware and body modifications that are not pleasant to the eye, societies on the brink of collapse, hacking machines/people, dangerous space travel, stagnant technology that probably makes the world worse. Examples of fiction in this style are:

- Neuromancer (book, love it)

- Blindsight (book)

- Quasimorph (video game)

- The Gap Cycle (interesting setting wasted on a weak series of books)

- Mothership

- Death in Space

I own both Mothership and Death in Space and they are good games, but they are a bit too thin setting wise and rules wise. I would love to run a longer sandbox campaign in the style of Quasimorph - a group of mercenaries on their own big ship traveling through a star system and completing contracts from shady corporations and gangsters. But longer campaigns IMHO require a robust advancement system for PCs, which neither game has. What I mean by that: some special abilities, rules for hacking and cyberware, weapon modification, upgrading your ship, some talents or feats etc. Some random tables for generating worlds, ships, encounters, npcs also would be nice.

Is there a ttrpg with a setting like this that has a lot of "meat" on its bones mechanically speaking?

Hello! This post might be a little lengthy because I want to give context for the game I'm currently running and what kind of experience I hope to give my players.

I might be second guessing myself so much because I haven't ran a game in years and I've never attempted a hex or point crawl before, so I wanted some advice on how I can proceed. I'll try to be as concise as I can, but it may be a bit ramble-y because I'm still trying to get my thoughts together. Sorry for any confusion.

For context:

• Running in Pathfinder 2e.
• Playing on Foundry VTT.
• Game is about a yearly competition where hundreds of contestants are dropped off at a remote island to look for an artifact hidden there by a King - whichever individual or team that brings it back to a boat first earns a wish (non-magical, essentially a favor) from the King that organized this event.

In the last session, after the party attended the opening ceremony, had a feast, learned the rules, and had a chance to meet some of the other contestants, they were all shipped off to this island and the session ended with them disembarking and making a sprint for a tree line to get away from as many of the other contestants as possible.

Now that they're on the island, I was planning on prepping a Hex Crawl since it was a concept I heard of before and it sounded like it made sense for my game, but I recently heard of Point Crawls and now I'm a little stuck deciding which method to go for. I'm hoping to receive some insight to help me decide which way to take my prep.

Some narrative and mechanical details to keep in mind:

• 14 day time limit - the ships leave the island after dropping everyone off and do not return until sunset on the 14th day, meaning even if you find the artifact early, you have to keep it out of the hands of the other contestants until the ships return. There are four docks on the north, south, east, and west ends of the island, and the ships all arrive and leave at the same time. Those who don't make it on time will be left behind.
• Light survival mechanics - players only need to eat every 24 hours, and I have a bunch of homebrewed recipes and ingredients they can make for small stat buffs that last for a day. Those recipes are broken into 4 tiers, and higher tiers grant better bonuses but require more ingredients to make. Players can choose to search for ingredients inside of their current hex/point and what they find depends on where they are and how well they roll. Things like shelter, resting etc. are all rules as written.
• There are 4 types of terrain - roads, plains, forests, and mountains, all taking different amount of time to travel through and search. It takes the same amount of time to travel to a hex/point as it does to search it while there. It's also possible to scout out adjacent hexes/points to see any potential landmarks or terrain before traveling to it.
• There are clues scattered around the island to help contestants find the artifact's location if you piece enough of them together. Clues can also be found on other contestants, if the party decides to fight them and take it by force (violence isn't required, but it is allowed).
• I was originally interested in doing a combination of some random encounters (combat & non-combat) with some planned ones depending on the player's choices they made before and during the competition.

Here are some random thoughts I had about any concerns I have when approaching either of these options:

• For random encounters, the tables will be dependent on the hex/point terrain, how much time is left in the competition, and the ongoing narrative that naturally occurs between the party and other contestants. Hex would be rolled walking into it while point will be rolled during travel between two points.
• Are hex crawls more prep heavy than point crawls? I like prepping enough to be flexible and respond to situations that occur during the session but do hex crawls sound like more prep due the possibility of going in any direction? I prefer to prep situations, not plots, if that makes sense. It feels more like emergent storytelling where the players and I both get to be surprised what happens during the sessions instead of me pre-planning outcomes.
• I do want there to be a chance of failure, but I'm worried about the small chance that the players end up going in the wrong direction and they never come across the artifact or another contestant that may have it on them (maybe if a set amount of days pass another contestant finds it first and the party has to track them down before time runs out). It could be convenient to just put the artifact near them when enough time has gone by looking for it, but it doesn't feel as earned as placing it somewhere specific and having them follow the clues to find it. Are the players more likely to "get lost" in a hex crawl, even if the point crawl is made as the game progresses and not all ahead of time?
• I've heard some people combine the methods. How does that work, and is it more complicated than using one system on it's own?

So what does everyone think? With the info I've provided, which method do you think would work best? Thank you for taking the time to read all of this!

My group is looking to try a new game. We have played Dnd 5e, Call of Cthulhu & Pulp Cthulhu, and the old 1st edition Star Wars from the 80s. Almost all the players have GMed before. We will pick who wants to run it after we pick a game.

We are looking for something in the western or scifi genres that allows alot of character development in the story. Supernatural/magicl elements are fine as long as there is a believable world.

We looked into Traveler but 1 player wasn't interested in the progression system. If you like this game, please give me perspectives that might explain it better to people who have never played.

TIA!