**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.

Public Service Announcement:

The purpose of kickstarter, and other crowdfunding sites like it, are to give creators enough money (and therefore time) to design their product, as well as fund other costs such as art and layout.

It is unreasonable to expect a designer to design the product for free, and to use Kickstarter only to pay for art, layout, or other logistical costs. Design is work. It deserves payment. If someone is on Kickstarter trying to sell a product, they're trying to go professional (by definition). It is unreasonable to expect them to create simply as a labor of love.

Big companies (like MCDM, Darrington Press, etc) have warped the public perception of what Kickstarter is by putting forward nearly finished products. This raises people's expectations for how far a Kickstarter project should be developed, which warps the perception of Kickstarter into just another storefront where people post their finished products.

This raises the bar so high that it alienates the very designers that Kickstarter was designed to help out: small creators.

Please support your small creators. If the idea sounds good and they have put fourth enough info to let you know that they are likely competent, they shouldn't be required to show any more than that.

It's called Kickstarter, not Kickfinisher.

Yes, that's risky. But it's supposed to be. This is the place for the brave to fund the future. Without us willing to take the risk, thousands of small creators will never share their new ideas with us. We're taking the risk for our own benefit, and that of the entire hobby.

If that's not for you, that's okay. But let's keep Kickstarter/crowdfunding serving its intended purpose: to fund projects from the beginning.

Thank you.

- Matthias

Not absurd, not silly, full-on dada

If you're not sure what that is, here's a Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada

One thing I've seen a lot in my discussion threads here is the idea of a system being designed for certain things, doing them really well or not well. IE-DnD as heroic fantasy, but struggling to do say-horror as an example. Ironically reminded me of an old descriptor of the Frostbite game engine as an F1 race car, doing one thing really well, and everything else poorly.

But recently, I've been thinking about this with my playgroups VtM campaign. For context, we've been running 5E (due to me picking up the book physically at a store.) 5E is designed to focus more on the personal horror aspect of Vampire, mechanics like the hunger dice, and lore changes putting the emphasis on you trying to survive in a world where you are hopelessly outmatched. It was divisive for that reason, although it does have it's own fanbase now, thankfully.

Thing is...my players and I haven't focused on that so much. As a GM I've been focused on the broader lore of the WOD and the political shenanigans...and my players have ended up bantering so much that we've become "What we do in the Shadows."

And honestly? It's great, we're all having an amazing time of things so far, I check in and everyone's enjoying themselves. It's just a lot of fun, and really helped my skills as a GM to just keep the plot going while rolling with the punches, and making my players laugh and have big character moments in equal measure. We took a system designed for personal horror, and turned it into something else entirely.

So today I want to ask, what are some systems you've used in ways that weren't quite intended by the designers? Or more broadly, what are some systems you used for things that the system itself struggles with?

I'm interested in people's experiences with long campaigns in games other than D&D and Pathfinder. I'm curious which games support long campaigns well, which are terrible at it, and which are in-between.

What do I mean by a "long" campaign? Let's say 40 sessions or so, typically a year or year-and-a-half, or longer.

Longer games lead to more-experienced characters and in most games more-experienced characters are more-powerful characters. I'm interested in learning more about which games handle that higher experience level effectively and how they do so.

I've had my share of long D&D and Pathfinder games; I've also had long Call of Cthulhu games (Masks of Nyarlathotep for the win), and fairly long games of Aberrant, Orpheus, and Vampire: the Dark Ages / Masquerade.

What I've found is that while yeah, D&D tends to fall apart (or at least change drastically) at higher levels / longer games, Pathfinder 2e doesn't; Call of Cthulhu certainly doesn't, as characters tend to fall apart just as much as they grow in skill, and nobody's got access to superhuman ability regardless.

Aberrant and Orpheus were somewhere in the middle, and Vampire handled a long game reasonably well. All three of these mitigate the power curve by virtue of abilities typically requiring a geometric increase in experience costs.

I'd be very curious to hear others' experience in this area. Which games really shine for long campaigns? Which ones fall apart after twelve sessions?

I'm looking for suggestions on some great sci-fi games. I've played a lot of Starfinder, Shadowrun, and Mothership, but the first two are more like sci-fantasy (magic and the like) and Mothership is strongly horror.

I was hoping to get some recommendations on great sci-fi games that aren't just "it's D&D but with guns". My table most often plays Daggerheart, Mothership, and other more narrative focused games.

Systems I've been looking into: Stars without Number, Traveler (both of which sound a little too crunchy but I'm not sure), FF Star Wars, Scum and Villainy.

What mystery related RPGs do you really like, and what makes them unique?

I ask because I work at a library where we host a game convention every March, and the Friday morning of that convention we do training for teachers, librarians, and other out of school time professionals. This coming March we are going to show off mystery games and how they can be used in schools and libraries.

I know that most RPGs can be used to run mysteries, and that many games have published mystery scenarios, but I'm most interested in systems or scenarios that have special allowances for mystery solving activities or focus on mysteries specifically.

Some examples I plan on sharing, but I would still appreciate your insight on these or other games

• Call of Cthulhu - granddaddy of mystery games, roll for every clue
  
• Trail of Cthulhu, Gumshoe - Core clues for the asking
• Brindlewood Bay - no fixed solution, writers room clue gathering and roll for solution.
• Monster of the Week - six step clock, the session progresses
  
• City of Mist - iceberg
  

D&D has heavy mechanical and proceedural support for combat. It has little support for open intrigue. D&D is claimed to be a game that supports 3 pillars, but is really heavily combat focused. It's just not said out loud.

Burning Wheel does say out loud, that it is a game heavily focused on character believes and drives, and the rest of the game is in support of that. The heavy mechanics and proceedures are there to give weight and structure to them.

Games like Blades in the Dark are about doing heists, and have the proceedural support and weight for it.

But are there examples of games that devote heavy mechanical or proceedural support for something that even the game itself acknowledges that it's not really about?

Just as it says. I often run a New West/Lone Star central campaign but the players seemed to mostly want something more exotic. So after 30 years I finally got the phase world book. It just feels like a cheap knockoff of Sar Wars with a bit of Rifts flair.

don't gete wrong there is cool stuff in there but it seems like mostly it's very... As I said above. advise?

Which RPGs have decent psionic powers available? Any settings are welcome.

Bonus if it has elflike creatures available.

I do run one of these and we've had some great times over the last handful of years, but its rough when certain players are busy or otherwise grt pulled away, since they were the most focused on making things happen. so I was hoping to read some love for the player-driven format to perk me up.

Mine is Immortal: The Invisible War.

I barely remember the mechanics of it other than it was one of the most complicated things I had ever seen. I do remember loving the story of the setting and mythology behind it.

And the art was so radically different than most other books I had seen or bought.