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Not really asking for advice because the situation resolved itself but curious to see how others might approach it.

So lets say you're playing a game with a very established setting and lore. Think Vampire the Masquerade, or Lancer, or Exalted.

Lets say there is a clear intended interpretation of one or more elements of that setting that while presented as complex, have a common core interpretation that most of the people who play in it will agree with. Like 'The Camarilla is stable but very Evil and therefore not well liked' or 'The Union is Utopian but Limited and is hampered by their inability to be everywhere at once' or 'The wide-scale persecution of Solars in the modern age is doing more harm than good on several levels and the Siderials should probably swallow their pride and apologize for the genocide.'

Then lets say you're setting up a new game, you recruit a bunch of people, and you have session zero to lay out expectations for what the game's going to be about, and then you get started and have a couple sessions. And then you realize one or more players has Wildly different ideas about what 'correct' view of the situation is.

Like they say something like "Well because the Camarilla is Stable that must mean they're Right. If they weren't Right they wouldn't be so Stable. Ergo the Evil is exaggerated propaganda and I'm going to get mad at every NPC who tries to say that the ends don't justify the means or that they're blatantly corrupt. And then I'm also going to get mad at the GM for having bad opinions."

Obviously I'm being kind of hyperbolic with the example, but it's that feeling of going 'hang on did we read the same book here' that always throws me. Me having NPCs who don't like the Camarilla should not be shocking nor is it signposting that they're secretly a villain. A lot of people don't like them. They're divisive. Intentionally written to be divisive! So are all the other factions. We're all monsters that's the point.

Normally what happens is the dissonant player ends up leaving the table. I don't think I've ever had more than one in four who disagrees with me that vehemently which makes me feel like my read of a given setting is generally correct? Or at least statistically average. I suppose if I had the entire table going wtf I'd be more likely to assume I was the one who'd misread something.

Curious if anyone else has encountered this and what the resolution was. I don't want to imply this happens a lot, it's come up maybe twice in the last three years, but insert 2 nickels meme here.

Hi, all - as the title says, I'm selling off my collection because my kids aren't interested in 1st/2nd edition AD&D. I've got some extremely rare stuff from my time at TSR (like a prepress copy of S2 White Plume Mountain; promotional art packages for Dark Sun, Al Qadim, etc.) as well as 1st and 2nd edition modules, adventures, campaign settings, and so forth. What are the places you'd recommend for listing and selling?

I haven't played 5e for years and have no plans to go back to it, but I keep hearing praises for Shadowdark and I can't help but feel it's 5e-lite. What makes Shadowdark better than 5e?

Interested in systems that have characters drop to zero, ‘then what?’, but interested in death and dying mechanics in general; houserules as well.
Cheers

"One does not simply 'one-shot' [insert chonky TTRPG as thick as a phonebook]"

Hi all! I really need some advice on designing a one-shot session, as I am planning to (finally) start going to cons and demo something I've been working on.

The trouble is, I have extremely limited experience designing one-shots, particularly for more dense games that typically rely on a certain amount of player experience and time investment (think of trad games like Shadowrun that have a lot of moving parts and require at least some time introducing/aligning on the setting). You know... the type of game built for enduring campaigns, with no possibility of capturing all the nuances/options in a single session.

Basically, I want to design a One-Shot session that is 1) fun and 2) able to show off some of the game's most important elements, all in a 2-3 hour session, but with a game that I'd consider medium complexity. I get the fundamentals of having tailor-made pregens to show off certain things, and including session events that let each of those pregens get the spotlight. But that's where my knowledge on this topic ends.

I'm hoping to hear from anyone who has run one-shots of chonkier games, and especially anyone who has designed said one-shot sessions.

Thanks in advance!

The game is set on Poseidon, an ocean planet where humans are trying to build underwater colonies while dealing with hostile environments, powerful corporations, and alien lifeforms. The Alexandrian covered it in a review a while back.

It's gone through a few publishers, but as of this year Gallant Knight Games has released a new edition. I'm wondering if anyone has played the new version of the game?

Last year I wrote a piece on my website, on what I call full spectrum games, and included it, but I don't know much about the new version. Basically a full-spectrum game is a tabletop RPG world where success requires mixing multiple gameplay modes like combat, stealth, hacking, diplomacy, magic, usually in the same adventure.

These are very versatile tabletop RPG systems and settings, and I put together a list of the top 8, but I don't know if the new version qualifies or not, so if someone has I'd like to pick your brian.

We all have a piece of ourselves in our characters but do you tend to lean into or away from it?

Hello, I am currently in the process of converting our Mothership RPG Gradient Descent campaign into video versions for YouTube, the latest example of which is Here. I was wondering if all the effort is worth it, or that people don't really care about video and just throw youtube actual plays on in the background or a second monitor.

For those of you that do enjoy actual plays on youtube, is having video or displaying graphics/maps/portraits important? Or not really a big deal? Does the editing and production values help with sticking with a show, or should audio quality the top priority of actual plays.

I would note that ai tools are not being used, obviously that would cut a lot out of the artwork time. I tend to listen to most actual plays when consuming them, but I'd admit I sometimes like throwing on the video versions of some shows (when I have some rare free time to sit and watch) What do ya'll do?

Was looking at 5e alternatives, and though Draw Steel is very interesting, I'm finding the combat takes at least as long as 5e or longer, even on Codex. Also not the hugest fan of the gritty theming, though that's nitpicking. (ShadowDark and the like are just not what I'm looking for from 5e) What games could stand in for high fantasy adventures that have less mechanical depth while still having some to get into, as not every group I'm in is huge into rp enough to make Daggerheart work.

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so long story short:

I intended to adapt this beloved one shot into some other system but decided on designing the advanture from ground up

it was not as easy as it seemed

now im not a very experienced GM but I just couldn't get the intertwined plots to work, i tried to make some connection between multiple plot points but at best it turned into some railroad quests scattered about the location with minimum space for player intervention . instead of a mini sandbox that the original is famous for

like I went with idea of designing character interactions based on their locations and specefic time first (e.g 6:35 p.m character A and F (not plot related) are both in the kitchen they collide (insert the reason here) (insert the consequences here)) but that took agency away from the players and turned it into a rather fun writing exercise.

so in short i look for advice on how to make this work from experienced GMs

(Edit: something i should mention is that i already posted this in r/RPGdesign and then deleted it because i felt it didnt fit that subreddit so if you have seen the contents of this post before its because its the same post but i didnt intend to overflow both subreddits hope this is all well and good )

After a year long 5e campaign of curse of Strahd, I hung up my 5e hat, I then shot it and buried it at sea.

God has it been great, we've played blades in the dark, cyberpunk, CoC, Delta green, mothership, Fabula Ultima, savage worlds.

None of them take a full session to run a fight, None of them have objectively bad character creation choices, No Rangers, No Martial-Magical Divide.

They want you to play and explore! No spells like Identify, Detect Creature or Detect thoughts killing any feeling of mystery just so you can shut up and get back to the two hour long fights.

But my players won't stop talking about how they miss 5e.

Will they play a martial class? Oh no, the martials are boring and broken,they say, if you aren't playing a spellcaster you're basically worthless!

But they still clamour for the character building, the number go up machine.

So I'm asking you, the horde of GMs who have forever cast the D from their titles, I ask you;

What the fuck system can I shove in their plebian gullets to make them never say that dreaded system's name again?

Edit for the Yanks: I'm british, this is banter, I talk like this to my friend's faces and they hit me with it back. I don't hate the people in my life, I am not being held hostage. I know we are varying levels of Autistic here but c'mon I'm literally asking for system suggestions as a compromise for my group.