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Beginner GM here with 20 plays of Mothership experience.

I'm going through the Heart book and the openness scares me a little bit. Creating delves from scratch with events and connections seems like too much prep (or improv?). And then somehow connecting a bunch of disconnected landmarks and weaving an overall plot through all this. Or maybe I'm overthinking this?

So I've been thinking of grabbing the Dagger in the Heart book to have a campaign framework but maybe that's not the intended way to play the game?

Hey People,

I'm looking for an RPG to buy for my son's birthday (11).
We'd be playing it with him & my wife.
I've never really GM'd - he started doing DnD at school in an after school club and is loving it We all play quite some boardgames including more difficult ones like Chip Theory's The Elder Scrolls and Hexplore it -so the rules don't have to be too light.... but no Grimdark and he's not really into horror stuff (so sadly, no Cthulhu).

He likes Fantasy, not a real sci-fi head....
Also - I'd like to buy real something physical if possible. (so anything books / card based would be preferable over just PDF) And based in UK (London).

Any help is welcome.

I'm thinking games like Mythic Bastionland, Apocalypse World, or (a bit) earlier random-table driven versions of D&D.

Less so Call of Cthulhu and current D&D.

I don't need to tell you what Daggerheart is. You almost definitely know it, you might have played it, and you probably have opinions on it yourself.

My group played a six session mini campaign using the Beast Feast frame that came with the book.

Here is a video where we discuss our thoughts.

In summary:

• The game felt very open and flexible, so much so that to us - with plenty of PbtA experience - it felt like it lacked pressure and friction to act against.

• Combat felt odd. There were only rules for making an attack and some combat spells, yet it felt like the game wanted us to try all sorts of different approaches to combat narratively.

• The frames system was really nice for making the game your own. Many of them include rule changes or add entire new subsystems. To me, our frame's monster cooking subsystem was the most interesting part of the game.

• Even within a frame though, Daggerheart feels more reliant than most games on the table to create and provide most of the direction and drama of the adventure. I think it would work if you're a "theatre kid" style player but it didn't work for our group as well as we hoped.

What was your experience playing the game?

Recently I found out that a pair of my online players had been using AI for character creation and as a roleplaying aid during sessions. After informing them that this was against the table rules I asked them to refrain from doing so in future. This led to them curtly dropping out of the game.

As I was wondering if this would qualify as me kicking them or them essentially kicking themselves, the thought struck me that over the 20 years I've been in this hobby I have very rarely directly ejected someone from the game against their will. The few problem players I have had have usually just stopped showing up on their own, either due to a loss of interest or in a "you can't fire me, I quit!" sort of way, like the recent example.

What was it that broke the camel's back in your case?

Background:
played as a dm and player dnd 5e 2014 for 1-2 year took a break for a year and want to get back to it.

Requirements:
pre written modules since Im in uni I wont be able to write new campaigns
Combat being fun
Great for new people who never played ttrpgs

I'm currently a recent high school graduate, and honest to god I don't have the money to pay $50 for a source book, or more access to character sheets. And then have to pay $8-16 dollars for the extra stuff. An example of this is when I was trying to get into the Fallout VTT on roll20. A good portion of it was locked behind paywalls--particularly specific perks, weapons, and even races.
Honestly I'm more focused on paying for my college tuition, and if I had the money I would totally be down to buy everything necessary. But as of now, I obviously cant. So I was wondering if there was a reason as to why so many VTT resources are expensive? And if there were any alternatives to them? Because the party I'm currently playing with is also comprised of new players to TTRPGs like me, dealing with the same issue.

Apologies if these questions seem a bit naive or dumb. Again, new to TTRPGs in general. I really do want to get into the genre.

Hey everyone!
I’m looking for a TTRPG system that feels somewhat similar to Heart and Blades in the Dark, but that’s more setting-agnostic or easier to adapt to different worlds without heavily hacking the system.

What I really like about Heart is the way players define goals/desires for their characters and the GM is expected to actively build the session around advancing those things. I love that kind of player-driven structure.

What I like about Blades in the Dark (from what I understand, since I haven’t played much of it yet) is the amount of player agency. Not just in deciding actions, but in how players almost co-author the session and shape the fiction collaboratively.

I’m basically searching for a system that:
is narrative-focused
gives players a lot of agency over the story/world/session flow
supports improvisation and collaborative storytelling
doesn’t lock me into a very specific setting
lets me run campaigns in my own worlds without rewriting half the system

I still want enough structure/mechanics to support play, but I’m much more interested in emergent storytelling and player authorship than tactical combat.

Any recommendations?

I am wanting to run a zombie apocalypse TTRPG. Each “arc” will be 3-6 sessions with time jumps in between like Tales of the Walking Deaf games. If their character survives they move on. If they die they make a new character. Each arc will be a few days so if they get infected they can still complete it.

First Arc - Surviving the outbreak.
Second Arc - First Winter.
Third Arc - 1 Year In

There might be more arcs depending on how we like the story. The best part of zombie media is the fact that no one is safe. That being said, I want to make sure the players aren’t just dying one after the other.

What would you all recommend for an over arcing Zombie campaign, Breathless or All Flesh Must Be Eaten. The zombies are going to be rage zombies. They decay slowly but are filled with rage when they are first infected. New zombies run, while the older zombies are more of a light job when provoked.

Breathless looks fun because it makes each encounter feel like a drain on the person as a whole but I like the skill aspects of AFMBE. I was thinking of running Breathless for the First Arc because the characters the players are playing will be normal people. Unprepared for the world they now find themselves. The remaining Arcs could be AFMBE because they now have a chance to learn and prefect their skills.

What would y’all recommend for a long term campaign?

Hello everyone! First, I want to clarify something that's obvious to many here, but not so obvious to others.

*Moves microphone closer*

"There's no way to play that's considered right or wrong. If everyone at the table is enjoying the game and having fun, that's what matters."

With that out of the way, I'd like to share some thoughts and see your opinions on what kind of mindset/game style you usually adopt when you're a game master.

When I say "Mechanics-Supported Fiction," I'm referring to the style of play where the rules and mechanics of the system only become relevant when the fictional situation requires some kind of more concrete control/definition/challenge.

This style of play (in my personal view/definition) is one where the rules themselves are only used in moments of uncertainty or situations with real weight or consequences for the narrative. This style heavily utilizes the idea of ​​"If your character has what it takes to do it... they just do it" to resolve challenges that aren't so relevant to the main story.

Other things defined by this style of play include the idea of ​​the game master ignoring knowledge rolls when a character has a fictional theme/background/knowledge that makes that specific information something they would know without needing to roll.

I think most game masters narrate with some variation of this style or use this type of "narrative pass" at one point or another.

However, recently I've been playing with a new group to make up for my days without playing RPGs, and this group works much more with the more traditional idea of ​​"fiction based on mechanics."

Everything you do, you roll; the rules description is absolute. No matter how nonsensical the argument you used to talk to the guard was, if you passed the test... it worked. In the group I played with, I noticed a lack of detail in the actions before the dice were rolled; it didn't make sense to narrate in great detail what you do before getting the result. (Which, to be fair, makes sense.)

The characters' actions are usually much more inclined towards a mechanical benefit. For example, we had magic users in the group who ended up spending all their Mana (making it clear that this wasn't D&D), which led the group to decide that we should all have a 3-day rest scene (which was the time it took for their Mana to fully recover). For me, it felt weary at first because... when it comes to story, we were in the middle of a rather intense situation, and it didn't make much sense for the characters to sleep for 3 days unless it was a more relaxed situation where the characters used that time to interact with NPCs or do things with their free time. But in the end, the narrator just did a timeskip, and we continued. Rules of persuasion also applied to players, meaning that any player could persuade another player character to agree to do something, even if in the fiction the character wouldn't necessarily do it.

I just want to make it clear that none of these things were used in a toxic way within the game; players only made rolls to persuade other players for comedic reasons, not out of bad taste, and the players were very polite to me.

But something to note is that many times some roleplay scenes were interrupted by surprise rolls because, technically according to the rules, an action that in my mind was just to make a nice scene would have a roll to be made.

Situation 1:

Me: "Look... I know how war changes a person." *Takes a sip of drink at the bar counter* "But know this, you don't have to go through this alone—"

GM: "Make a Constitution check."

Situation 2:

GM: "When the master of the hall arrives at your quarters, what does he see you doing?"

Me: "Oh! I'm probably practicing with my sword."

GM: "Okay, make an attack roll to see how good your form is."

And other examples that my memory fails me to recall.

Both styles have benefits and drawbacks when taken to extremes. When very few rolls are made, the mechanical customizations, skills, and points invested in certain things end up being trivialized.

For example, if any player can calm an NPC down with just roleplaying without rolling anything, it can make the player who invested their points in dialogue/psychology feel somewhat cheated. Or it can take away the feeling of BEING a game, for people who really want to see the story unfold unpredictably through the dice.

Rolling for everything and strictly following the mechanics regardless of the situation can end up diminishing the impact of some scenes, slowing down the game, and encouraging players to act less for fear of failing in an unnecessary action.

This new group I play with has been playing this way for years, and they love it because of the comedic scenes and unexpected twists that occur, they also enjoy the more game/tactical aspects of the game, so it's always more fun to roll than just talk, in their opinion.

My other group has a great flow with the story, and nobody abuses the circumstances where the game master allows for a single action because it was so well narrated.

Obviously, there are systems that work better for certain styles than others and that might be better suited to different types of groups, but I think we all do a bit of both at some point.

My question for you is:

Which style do you prefer, and why? How do you apply it? And what is your opinion on the other?

Hi everyone! I'm studying Mekton Zeta for a future campaign and need to clear up two specific mektons combat rules:

1. Torso at 0 Kills: I remember reading somewhere that if the torso hits 0 Kills, the Mekton is completely destroyed. Is this explicitly written somewhere in the MZ manuals? I can't find that rule anymore to save it in my notes.
2. Hitting a Destroyed Location: If an arm or leg is already destroyed and a new attack rolls that same location on the hit chart, what happens?

Any exact page references would be a huge help. Thanks!