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I met a gm some time ago, running a game that lasted about two months. They advertised as so, but I figured they were most likely vetting for players for a longer term game. Game was fun, players were cool, GM was flexible and when the end of the adventure came. GM said thanks for playing and closed shop.

Players of course wanted to continue but GM had no interest. I was bummed figured the GM didn't care for one of us or all of us as players and moved on. Within the same day GM posts another ad seeking another group of players with the same time restriction. No more than two months.

Peeked over at another system discord I know they're in and checked their ad history. Same thing with the different system, games no longer than two months. Out of curiosity I dm them "Hey why not just keep the same group and run through all these different adventures you have?"

Their answer was unique amongst GM sensibilities as far as I am aware.

"I don't like playing with the same people over and over. Different people, different experiences, for good or bad. And players in systems with levels tend to want to keep reaching higher levels. I don't care for higher levels, they're uninteresting to me. Also I want to play different systems and I know for a fact some players from your table will never try out a different system like Blades. Even then like I said, I prefer to play with different people."

Like the title says, I'm looking to run a campaign set in mythic Greece. I would use 5e but I ran into a problem, I love mythology to the point that accuracy is important to me. The main issue I have is that your average hero has no substantial control over magic, they gain control through items or gifts. Does anyone know a game or system that supports a story like this?

I recently found a super cool layout in a book that used the outer page edge color to denote chapters, which meant it was easy to flip to a specific chapter. Then I realized how much diversity mork borg had in their layouts. Which overall got me super interested in layouts recently.

So now I'm curious. What kinds of RPG books have done layout really well vs really poorly? What made them so interesting?

Long, drawn out combats are boring. Button smashing the same attack each round is, too. Here's 3 tips from 13th Age.

1. Miss damage - on a miss you still deal your level's worth of damage, representing glancing blows.
2. Flexible Attacks - Make each die roll have meaning other than a binary hit/miss. Examples with situational bonuses: "on any natural even miss, add additional damage to the miss". Or, "On a roll of 16+ (and when the escalation die is at 5+) 3 allies can add 3d6 bonus damage to their next attack."
3. Escalation Die - each round of combat after the first, add a cumulative +1 to hit bonus. This bonus can be used to unlock abilities, add damage, or help speed up combat.

The escalation die and flexible attacks can be overlayed onto features, abilities, spells, etc. to further increase their potential uses. What do you all think?

Hello! I'm Polish, and in our country, the most popular RPG system has always been Warhammer Fantasy, especially the first edition, mainly because it was the first system most people experienced.

This has always led to conflict between fans and fans of other systems. For a very long time, they first fought DnD 3.0/3.5 fans, and then the second edition fans, who were, incidentally, called DnD-like.

To tell the truth, this admiration has always been completely incomprehensible to me. Especially when it comes to the first edition. Maybe because my first system included Werewolf: the Apocalipse, and then Earthdawn and Fading Suns.

The system is so popular in Poland because it's hard to play anything else. So I recently coined a saying: to hate Warhammer, you just have to dislike it.

I’ve been running drop in one shots for five months. I have had two players who have tried to play joke characters or disinterested characters. If it is early in the game, I highlight, “If your character isn’t interested in the adventure, then you want to play someone who is. This is what we’re doing tonight. The other characters are going to depend on you.” This one came up about 2/3 through the game and I just let them act, then moved to the next player.

My question is: Does this ever work? Is it ever enjoyable for more than a minute?

My initial read is no, it isn’t, but maybe that’s just me being grumpy.

To be clear, something like an Isekai or comedy game can totally work. I love Fiasco and my games often have laughs and hijinks. This is, “everyone is going deeper into the dungeon, I’m checking this collapsed tunnel and kicking rocks on my turn.”

When I say "tutorial-tier," I mean that the character feels incomplete in an awkward way: not in the sense of "Grrr, my PC does not start off as a superpowered demigod brimming with cool special abilities!" but rather, as if the character is stripped-down and lacking in key gimmicks, as if solely to avoid overwhelming beginners.

Two games that I can confidently say are not like this are Draw Steel and 13th Age 2e. Even right at 1st level, PCs come across as reasonably "complete." They still feel like they have plenty of room to grow and gain new abilities (and indeed, they very much do expand their toolsets!), but they do not feel especially "tutorial-tier" at 1st.

A bit further down the list are Daggerheart and D&D 4e. At 1st level, characters feel somewhat "complete," but still seem as if they are missing key tools in their kits. In Daggerheart, this goes doubly for bards and wizards, who really want those 2nd- to 4th-level Codex cards. I would personally never run a D&D 4e game anywhere lower than level 5 (and indeed, I have successfully run level 5+ for total beginners in the past, multiple times), and one 4e DM I regularly play with never starts below level 7 even for 100% newbies.

I find 1st- to 4th-level PCs in Path/Starfinder (2e, but 1e triply so) and D&D 5e, 0th- to 3rd-level characters in Tom Abbadon's ICON 2.0, and 5th- to 14th-level PCs in Fabula Ultima to all feel awkwardly incomplete. That last one sounds strange, but it has been my experience with Fabula; I saw two GMs house-rule that characters start at 10th level and rapidly level to 15th, while another veteran Fabula GM directly told me that PC feel tutorial-like until 15th.

I have actually played and GMed all of the games mentioned above, and have thus experienced them at their lower levels. (A lot of GMs start their games at the lowest level.)

What do you personally think?

My friends wanted me to start a cyberpunk type campaign so I was thinking of mixing Cities without number with across a thousand dead worlds. Although I am a pretty new GM I thought of mostly using cities without number for the combat and most other things then use the across 1000 dead words exploring rules. Any thoughts? Idk how viable this really is but I figured I’d have some type of gig mechanic where you guys explore for some type of corp then when in the normal city it’s typical cyberpunk stuff going on

I played Traveller at school in the early 80s and absolutely loved it. The little black and red books were probably responsible for many hours that should have been spent doing homework.

I spent evenings designing ships, creating worlds and dreaming up adventures. Ran my first campaign one summer holiday sitting in a friend’s garden.

Desperately trying to make them follow the hook I gave them whilst they did everything but.

I’ve recently come back to Traveller after all these years and the books are stunning. The artwork, production values and support material are leagues ahead of what we had back then.

But it got me wondering.

Is modern Traveller actually better, or am I just remembering being 14 years old with endless free time and a huge imagination?

For those who’ve played both, what do you think modern Traveller gained, and what did it lose?

I feel like I see way more attention paid to Electric Bastionland and Mythic Bastionland than Into the Odd, and I also feel like I see lots more eyes on ItO hacks than the game itself.

I’m curious if I’m just not looking in the right places or if the original game — even in its remastered form — has been effectively surpassed by these other titles.

I just don’t see much vanilla ItO, I guess, when it comes to modules or discussion. Mostly hacks or adjacent games.

I know that one of the best things about TTRPGs is that everyone can do basically anything. I've had campaigns start out with a heist quest, a prison break of just starting in a barrack in the middle of an ongoing war.

I was wondering if you have a favorite of yours? A fond memory you have of "Oh, I really liked when we started the campaign with that type of quest."