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Often NSR and OSR (though I have less experience with the latter) are recommended to people as a cure to DnD's mostly nonlethal heroic ethos. They are seen as more grounded somehow. While it is true that combat is deadlier, what has always attracted me to them has been the focus on exploration.

Most NSR games I am familiar with such as Mythic Bastionland, Mausritter, Into the Odd, Ultraviolet Grasslands, Vaults of Vaarn, Mork Borg have lavish and out of the ordinary settings. Almost all have procedures for travel and a shift from combat being the main danger to being one of many potential ones, drawing attention to the environments through puzzles, traps, hazards.

Even the act of playing of your character feels exploratory. You roll your character, then you discover who they are through play. Longer games often have factions and allow for a lot of player agency which in turn creates a loop where you get to explore the consequences of your choices.

Items and loot play a far more important role which makes that you want to search every nook and cranny for them. Plans are rewarded which means paying attention to any information you can use to your advantage. You actually investigate, so you cannot cheat with Perception or Insight.

As far as I can tell, D&D is not popular in Japan and never was because it was preempeted by a similar game called Sword World, which kind of seems like D&D but with a Japanese flair and only using 6-sided dice. I guess the polyhedron dice were another reason D&D never got popular in Japan, because in the 80's, they were almost impossible to buy in Japan.

I was wondering if anybody played it, and if so, did they like it?

I've read the book, but not played it.

I see it get a lot of praise here as a game that emulates JRPGs but with a more narrative focus and that really excited me.

Upon reading it, though, it seems like combat is just a separate mode you go into where you emulate video game combat?

The classes seemed to do some variation of damage/heal/status effect with not much that tied into the rest of the world. There's a system of objectives in combat but it seemed very much like "I give up my turn to do a basic roll to move a clock forward", and that didn't seem affected by your class rankings either.

It gets so much praise that I feel like I MUST be missing something, but as written I don't really get it. It seems like a fine enough narrative system with a very restrictive combat system added on

(posting this on both r/rpg and r/planescapesetting)
Hi all,

I love the D&D Planescape setting. I've been running it for quite some time, using 2nd edition material, and mostly using 2nd edition D&D rules. I've never been satisfied with them, but for that setting, that was the system we stuck with.

Well, I want to change a bit. I feel like 2nd ed. D&D is for once not the best system to really convey its themes. Mostly, it's the "roleplay" aspect of beliefs shaping reality, how it influences the PC and the worlds at large. There are no satisfactory "mechanics" for that. I know that I can, as the DM, invent something on the spot based on the narrative, but I would love something that, even slightly, nudges in that direction also mechanically.

There's another thing: I believe that my group became to "expert" with the system. It happens that, naturally, players default to """best""" builds, since they know the rules in and out, and some of the wonder of really building characters without a full, complete knowledge of the system, has been lost.

I admit that I am not very expert on all the possible RPGs out there, that there's a spectrum of possibilities, everything with pros and cons, and so, I set up some bullet points for something I am searching:
- it should not be too complex (we're all middle aged in my group, and we don't have time to really navigate something with the complexity of Pathfinder, for example)
- it should have at least an OSR "feel" (did I tell you we're middle aged? 😄 )
- it should be somewhat either retro-compatible with old D&D stuff, or easy to convert (again, not much time to really do rewrites from scratch!)
- (this is the most difficult part) it should support, as I was saying before, some type of "narrative reward" for the themes that are embedded in the Planescape setting.

I've searched a bit. OSE, Witehack 4e, Worlds Without Numbers, Cypher system, Shadowdark, etc... Even some systems tied to a setting that maybe can be reskinned? (mythic bastionland?) But I am not really an expert in any of these, so I am hre asking your opinion and your help!

What would be your choice?
Thank you!

I've been away from DMing for a while now but I am considering getting back into it, but definitely not with 5e. As I've been getting into medieval history again lately, it's obviously something that is on my mind. Maybe someone can think of a system that fits what I am looking for.

1. Armour system, maybe even with a fully customizable armour (helmet, chain mail, etc). Ideally early medieval (so no plate) but I can flavour around that.

2. Solid economic and provisions system, maybe even weapons maintenance and survival

3. Relatively grounded, injuries happen and need time to heal.

4. Magic is not a deal-breaker but it should be low-powered and the system should not depend on healing magic.

Hey there, for my homebrew campaign I want my players to move around in a caravan, setting up camp on hexes. And I would like them to be able to spend money to improve the camp and caravan, maybe just fluff maybe some things that grant mechanical bonuses, maybe certain hirelings. Kind of like a moving stronghold. I was inspired by the videogame stoneshard. Any ideas of a ttrpg system who covers that as an inspiration or how You would handle that?

Thanks!

There’s a lot of tips and tricks and advice for beginner GMs.

I’ve reached my first year GMing but want to continue to improve.

What are some advice for people who have GM for 1-3 years? Who have 30-50+ sessions under their belt. What advice can you give to those GMs to continue to improve?

I just REALLY want to share it with other people who play this system because I just had probably one of the most amazing scenes in my whole TTRPG career

For people that do not know SotDL. It is really deadly system, particularly on low levels. Me as a warrior would roll d20+3+d6 to beat defense values of like 13-14 against NORMAL enemies. With called shots rules it would change into d20+3-d6. I have 18 hp so 2d6 damage has potential to down me with 2 hits and he was hitting twice per round. My damage was d6+2, my AC was 17 so his d20+3+ (2d6 drop lower value) was hitting almost every time. No healing items and even if I had they would heal only 4 hp a pop. Any spell would probably kill me on the spot.

So quick background, dice decided I should play heroic warrior of christ. 17 out of 18 appearance, defended village from vile monsters, evangelist and scholar of the occult, tall and muscular... the whole set, even curio was bottled light which fit the vibe. Campaign was about us being thrown in penal colony a'la Gothic (great game, go buy it and play it if You love SotDL) so we had permission to be a bit more badass in backstory. I decided on travelling knight that was going places to hunt cultists and cults.

Fast forward where we fell to level 0 because exhaustion, capture, all this noise, managed to claw back on level 2 currently.

We were hired by mages that are also kind of our captors, kind of third force to help excavate and clean up from any monsters local dwarven fortress. We go there, finally reaching last place we can check. There are three of us.

We go down the stairs, and our dwarf sees dozens if not 100s(!!!) of walking dwarven skeletons in huge hall. I take command, tell him to go back upstairs, report to mages, me and magini stay here to keep note of situation. Then we hear some omnious chanting, it's not dark speech, not high archaic, no language that we know... and it's getting closer. So I just have alarms in my brain, I tell to magini to run away ASAP and bring back archmage that took us here because shit is about to hit the fan, I retreat to staircase and just kneel in my rusty chainmail, sword and heavy shield in hands and pray to New God for salvation.

And this fucker just comes right up to me. We get talking. He is saying how we can not stop what is coming, that his Lord is coming, I am trying to kind of fish for information and put on brave front despite being scared AF. Finally he gives me proposition, he lets me run away and he won't kill me for being in his way.

I decide to be suicidal and stand my ground, telling how behind me are people more powerful than me. How they are coming, adn even if he kills me, I will stop him for those few seconds... because distance between us is only few meters. And I wonder... are Your spells quicker than my sword coming for Your throat?

He calls my bluff and we get to fight. I shit You not, I pass EVERY single roll. Also GM allowed me to fight in "anti spellcaster" way because of my backstory experience using called shots rules to stop him from spellcasting for 1 round if I defeat his defense. So we are fighting, he is fing spellcaster but his basic melee dagger is +3 with 2 boons 2d6 damage and also has some kind of effect on failed strength roll, I have no idea what still because I always succeed.

We fight there for 4 rounds, he drops me to 1hp until I finally hear and see archmage and companions from the party coming as my character collapses on the ground.

I was sooo ready for character death, I was already planning another one already. But damn, that was huge protag energy.

Im a prepper. For in person, ive got an all-in-one screen that holds books, notebooks, dice, minis and has a 2 way dice tower, but I can get away with a screen and a laptop with an outline (usually gets thrown out). Curious what everyone's non-negotiable(s) is/are.

In most Cyberpunk RPGs, players want to be the freelance mercenary, probably in a way to replicate the gameplay style of a GTA protagonist.

But I am not aware of any Cyberpunk RPGs, or RPG sourcebook where the players get to play legit Corporate Employees, even though I think it would make for an interesting campaign framework. What if the player gets to play Adam Smasher? Or the poor SOB who has to do maintenance work on Adam Smasher?

Do you know any RPG product that would fit this bill?

Hi, looking for a quality square laminated battle grid map you can draw/erase on, to invest in. 3-4 feet if possible, won't crease and will erase easily. Any brand, or specific product you've used that you can vouch for? Thanks.