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.

Welcome one and all to a post where we can freely discuss the games that we have released or the games that we are making. Stop on by and maybe you'll find your new favourite RPG!

A bunch of us make cool shit, but the Indie RPG space is crowded and it can often be difficult to get the word out about why people should try out your game. That's why every week we try to focus on a different mechanic or setting to see how new RPGs can solve decades old problems or put new spins on old greivances!

Whether it takes the system wholesale or iterates upon it, Powered by the Apocalypse games have become a huge staple of the RPG scene! So come tell us about your PbtA game (or just any game you really like)!

I'm refraining from putting a personal definition this time around as PbtA is something I don't know or personally care that much about, so I'd rather not poison the well 😅

Thank you... me, for the suggestion!

As per mod approval, comments here do not count against rule 7 - comment as much as you want, answer as many questions as you need and discuss to your hearts content!

All that I would ask is that anyone who comments about their own system takes the time to look at the minimum at one other game in the comments and ask a question or provide feedback. Lively discussions are what get people interested and what keep people engaged!

Last week was "Innovation" and we got some pretty interesting discussions going!

If you want to suggest a topic for future weeks, be sure to include "suggestion" in your comment so I can easily find it!

You can also check out the Master List for previous weeks' topics!

Edit: This thread has heavily derailed from its intended purpose. It's meant as a space to talk about games that fit a certain topic that the average hobbyist might not have heard of. I didn't want to start yet another "PbtA bad vs. PbtA good" or "what is PbtA" argument thread.

So I implore you to come and suggest (indie) games that most would categorize as PbtA and let's refocus on talking about the cool stuff that's out there!

There are no limits but your time. You've got a committed pool of players, either small or large as is your preference. The only things holding you back are bodily functions (sleep, eating, etc).

How are you spending this time? All in the GM seat, all as a player, a mix of the two? What games are you finally going to get around to playing?

Im stuck between Dolmenwood, Land of Eem or one of the Cursed Scrolls for shadowdark. Any other suggestions are welcome too.

I'm burnt out from writing my own adventures and am really interested in starting a hexcrawl. We recently finished a mythic bastionland campaign and while it was really fun, i still had to do a lot of prep trying to intepret the myths

I started working on War of the Worlds for an RPG 20 years ago (Blog link) and last week I managed to release something that I was pretty happy with. It's a book for Twilight 2000. I'm debating whether to release a version for Vaesen as well (Vaesen is a kinda obscure game compared to T2000.

Anyway, here's the link. As usualy if there's interest I'll add more content. I've already got some encounter tables I'm working through which will be added to the book and my artist is working on another image. I figure it will slot right into the hexcrawl system

these are essentially Martians stats for YZE, with a bit more expansion.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/593384/twilight-tangents-ulla-the-martian-invasion-of-earth

I left Discord some months ago because I really dislike their user data collection and their app is basically spyware.

Does anyone use/know/recommend an alternative platform suitable for TTRPG communities? (besides Reddit).

NOT named FIST. Looking for alternatives.

I ran dnd 5e for a couple dozen session, a campaign and a couple fewshots and oneshots. Some sessions were fun, some were not.

Recently I discovered new RPGs, tried Nimble and loved it but still felt held back by the super generic dnd setting.

Then someone wanted me to run Delta Green, so I read thru the quickstart and the Music from the Darkened Room, but I just couldn't make my sessions not a slog. It took them 2 session to even get to the house. Each session and during prep I felt overwhelmed with information, and at the table nothing I needed was ever easy to find.

Then I came across Cairn 2e and used it to run the waking of willowby hall, which was boring and a slog the first time I ran it, but the second time I added a live countdown timer where every 10 mins the giant hit the house and an encounter happened, which was way more fun but didn't give the players a lot of room to breathe or be creative.

Due to scheduling issues neither of those have continued yet, but last week I got super into Mythic Bastionland and read it cover to cover, and got a good sense of the game as I had with previous games. I expected that running it could be very hard, and risked being boring and a slog. Ran two separate oneshots, in one the player resolved a myth and the other they literally only experienced one omen but they were both so incredibly easy to run and so much fun because I was discovering the situation and exploring alongside the players.

It was really hard to run, consistently so thru the session, but it almost felt like the book was holding my hand and forcing me to the creative and interesting in the way of making sense of the spark table results for everything. The world felt generative, in a good way, and I felt like I was a great dm doing a good job running an interesting game even when the second session's pace was much slower.

I think a part of it is the What's going on section in DG and other scenarios kinda just spoils the fun to some extent and with Mythic I didn't even know what's going on until it unfolded so it was way more engaging but that's maybe a bit irrelevant.

Finally, I separately also read thru the mothership player manual and the wardens guide both cover to cover and it made a ton of sense, I could envision how the game would play out and I was so excited by all the different cool modules and scenarios it had to offer. After running Mythic successfully I was very optimistic about mothership, which was known to be easy for new dms because of the good warden's guide and clear player's handbook and I've also read a lot of scifi and even played alien isolation, so I had a great idea of the vibe and inspiration to draw from.

I was planning to run Anothet Bug Hunt but after a couple of pages in it felt too handholdy and too verbose, almost harder because of the walls of text. So I decided to run Screaming on the Alexis, which seemed simple, interesting and fun.

But the session began and I just started failing. There was no index on the player's guide, so I couldn't easily look up any relevant rules, I barely understood how combat worked even tho I had read it and watched yt videos about it and thought I fully got it, but at the table I just choked and the combat section barely clarified anything when I eventually found it labelled Violent Encounters. The same books that felt so awesome and well designed and well written when I was reading them suddenly felt like my enemies bent on confusing me. Sorry for dramatic statement lol.

There were no stats or what the enemies are supposed to do and how, players would go in a room find a thing and spend somehow 30 mins discussing what to do even tho they understood the threat (I used the memory loss start I saw on reddit which I thought was awesome, with the alpha gaunt hitting the door and them being trapped in a room with a small gaunt and them realizing their memories were wiped and last thing they remembered was approaching this ship).They figured their jump drive was broken due to the artifact and had a clear goal, but had no idea what to do and honestly I didn't either.

I just had such strong mental blcoks and info overhead that I basically blanked and just was doing things pretty much randomly making up the system on the fly or off my memory.

There were just so many questions and so many things I couldn't answer or didn't know, like the android having superhuman strength or having a vacsuit but idk if they can survive a vacuum so on. Like way too much felt like it was just left up in the air for me to figure out on the spot. I'm writing this directly after the session and honestly I'm not sure what prep if any I can do for the next session to not just have info on hand better (seems like I need to come with a lot of info about the canon and tech and hacking and androids and so on that I can't just answee on the spot) but more importantly how to "get" the game.

I'm noticing a common problem that any scenarios that are just a bunch of rooms with descriptions either I just don't get how to play them or my players don't or both, but every room they go in and every bit of info they find just seems so mundane and boring and the encounters being just toxic crawlers combat felt underwhelming (they oneshot all of them since they had a single wound no health apparently).

I really wanna love mothership and I don't know what I'm doing wrong or how to fix it. Maybe if the game just isn't for me then I'll have to live with that but I want to power thru and learn to get it and run it for others such that they have fun.

I don't get what makes mythic bastionland so much easier to run like I can't possibly having a boring session of it, and what makes Mothership and Delta Green feel like the opposite where I can't seem to have sessions that are nothingburgers and a slog. It almost feels like the scenarios are lacking in "content". It doesn't feel novel or interesting or scifi, maybe a hgih bar set by mythic but the spark tables really made the world feel foreign and interesting nonstop, nothing was ever plain and boring. Maybe I just need spark tables of inspo for mothership idk.

Planning to read both books in full, research all questions that came up and those that could, try to organize all this info in handwritten notes that I can hope to reference better (tho I've never been able to successfully do this before maybe notetaking and bad prep is my biggest weakness Mythic does require literally zero prep).

I guess this post is both seeking advice on how to run mothership better but also subtly seeking more game recs like mythic that are so easy and fun to run that you just can't not have fun running it.

Also I'll read thru all of Another But Hunt as well maybe that'll help wrap my head around it.

In my collection of got Pirates of the Spanish Main for Savage Worlds, Rapscallion for PbtA, possibly debatable, but Scum and VIllainy for potential space piracy and FitD, and of course I've been obsessed with Pirate Borg.

I know there's more than one 5e supplement. I know Pathfinder has Skull and Bones. And, I know over the years there have been others. Since it might be the single most represented genre in my collection (if we exclude dragon in dungeon style fantasy), I figure I might as well go all in and start collecting stuff.

So, I come to you for recommendations!

EDIT: WOW! Thank you everyone! It's going to take me a while to go through all these replies! I really appreciate this input!

Edit: Removed Table Trouble flair because on second thought it's probably not right.

Hi, today i want to share a couple of thoughts that i have had ruminating in my brain for a week or so. TL;DR at bottom.

The Issue

I have a problem, clinical depression aside. When i run games i burn out after a few sessions. Make it four, for example. It's not my players, they're amazing. It's me and I know it. I loose interest and i dread the next session. I love prepping, be it recording something or making maps or handouts. But ultimately it takes the wind out of my sails because I know that in a couple sessions my focus will shift elsewhere.

"Playing to find out what happens" is an ideology that I wanted to subscribe to, but i don't think i have fully commited. Now, that brings us to

The Solution

I know that in session 0 we involve our players in the worldbuilding. Be it the Paladins order, the favorite diner of a Delta Green agent, the characters hometown or kingdom or continent etc. ad nauseum

We involve them, is the quintessential part i wanna highlight. But after session 0? Sure, i might ask questions about their session 0 input. Who runs the order? What do you usually order at the diner?
But i want to go beyond that.

What if instead of small narrative bites, they get to have control over larger portions of the narrative. I know that some systems handle this via a metacurrency that players can spend to invoke something. "I have a friend who lives here", "My cousins owns this place", "I used to date the dragon".

But i want to go beyond that as well.

The Idea

At the start of each session, to settle into the game night, i want to ask my players questions about the campaign. Some they can openly discuss, some where i want input from one specific player, some where they can all message me with their ideas.

I love improvisation just as much as prep. So this is in hopes that it will keep me engaged in the session. Retroactively fitting the seeded hooks to work around the group decisions, the singular input of a player or the secret messages.

My question to the community is this, if you would be so kind to humor my musings:

If your group started doing this, do you think it would further your investment that you have in the story because you shaped more than just the part your character occupies?

Or would this be a huge turn off?

I know, that my table is different to yours, but i hope that it sparks some interesting discussions.

Thanks for reading!

TL;DR:

If your group did small questionnairs at the start of gamenight, so that the GM can impovise off of the answers during the session - would that make you more invested or less?

Hey folks, I had an idea for a fun adventure for my game set in modern Pennsylvania (Monster of the Week system). The niece of one of the players gets ahold of an invisibility potion and is simultaneously accident-prone and shy, so the players have to work together to help catch her before she gets into something dangerous. The child, by the player's own decision, likes dogs and swimming, which is great because the game takes place in the city of Erie, next to the great lake Erie.

Does anyone have ideas for dangerous hijinks for the child to get into, and what the players might be able to do to catch her? The classic is that she wanders onto an active construction site, through traffic, and into a pet rescue shelter.

Hi! I'm going to run a Call of Cthulhu campaign, and I'd like to capture the atmosphere of The Batman (2022). Do you have any tips on how to achieve this, or on how to create a good atmosphere in general?