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So this is mostly just a rant.

New DM playing with some veteran players and I'm at my wit's end with one of them that is arguing over every single thing relating to bartering. It's an easily exploitable skill where you can barter something for up to double its value without a skill check. Go around doing this with multiple vendors and you can see how the money adds up fast. He's argued over availability of items, money the merchants have on hand, the fact that his skill set should allow him to schmooze and do anything he wants. This player also argued that I wasn't allowing him to purchase items like a bag of holding at the mage shop and that wasn't fair. I've finally told him he can do this round of bartering (NO MAGIC ITEMS), whatever, and am now secretly plotting an economic collapse.

Their plan is to leave the city during the next session and when they come back, the city is going to be in an economic crisis with the merchant guild tightening ship and causing widespread shortages as this guild also bankrolls the shipping and fishing industries which the city heavily relies on. The guild has also outlawed bartering for the time being, leaving the poorest who rely on bartering for food to starve. All of this while the city goes into the winter season when the economy is slow normally.

Just because the book says you can do something doesn't mean there aren't consequences.

Rant over. Plotting begins.

I’m never sure if these kinds of posts are good or useful, or just another indulgent version of “let me tell you about my campaign/character,” but I know I’m always fascinated by rundowns and mini-reviews. So in case this is of interest to anyone, here’s what I played or ran in 2025, ranked in order of games I liked most to least. I’ll probably play a few more sessions of ongoing campaigns before the end of December, but no additional games.

I included session counts for context, and I left off a bunch of PbP games, since most were cut off too abruptly (as PbP games usually are) to really count as a distinct series or campaign, but it still wound up being a monster of a post. There are a lot of one-shots and two-shots, which aren't always the best way to gauge what works or doesn’t, but in every case here I also read the game. And even the ones that at the bottom of my list were games I had a lot of fun with, even if in some cases that was entirely about the table, not the system. But apologies if I slam something you love—this is all obviously subjective and just my dumb opinion.

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Night Witches (PbP, the equivalent of around eight live sessions)

PbtA game about Soviet airwomen in WWII, using old-ass biplanes to bomb Nazis and trying to survive privation and male superiors.

What I liked: The laser-precise specificity of this game, from the setting and premise to the play phases and moves (Day moves while you’re at base, Night moves while you’re on bombing runs) to the options you have for moves, is incredible. It’s the most tightly designed PbtA game I’ve played, and gave us the tools to put together a genuinely tragic, super compelling narrative. It was also grueling, in the best way, constantly applying more pressure, never giving your characters enough time between missions. Do you scavenge for more plane parts, focus on repairing with what you have, mollify the NKVD officers or party loyalists looking to blame you for every setback, or get some sleep! It’s the definition of a game that’s not-for-everyone, but I thought it was a masterpiece.

What I’m less sure of: Very specific criticism, but it felt a little slow to gain Regard for people or planes, a mechanic where you get +1 for rolls related to it, but take 1 harm immediately if they’re destroyed. Regard is way too fun to gate behind advancement or very rare moves.

Would I play again: With the right group, definitely.

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Mythic Bastionland (Six-session series and a one-shot)

Everyone knows about it, but it’s Arthurian knights but spookier, weirder, and filtered through OSR hexcrawling and a thousand incredible Chris McDowall ideas,

What I liked: For me, OSR sometimes gets bogged down in minutiae—how much and what kind of treasure are we collecting, what gear do we have to problem-solve around a situation, how many questions are we going to ask before proceeding another 10 feet, are we doing the “smart” thing right now or being bold and stupid in a way that the adventure demands we do for. MB deftly sidesteps or barrels through all of that. You’re a knight seeking quests, not some hardscrabble treasure-hunter, and everywhere you go something cool is happening. And when in doubt about what to do, refer to the type of knight you are, or your Oath: SEEK THE MYTHS, HONOUR THE SEERS, PROTECT THE REALM.

It’s also packed with more amazing art pieces per page than anything out there.

What I’m less sure of: Something is happening everywhere you go, which is great at first! But the quests can start to pile up fast. I haven’t hit a point where that’s a major problem, but it does feel like an extended campaign could get buried under all that happenstance, and the game doesn’t really give you tools to make a shorter campaign pack a punch, unless the GM just decides the City quest is happening, play loop be damned.

Would I play again: I wanted more after the one-shot I played, and the series I’m playing in with one of my regular groups is still going great.

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The Between (Two-shot)

A PbtA game about Victorian-era monster-hunters chasing down supernatural threats while revealing a Moriarty-style mastermind’s scheme.

What I liked: It has the richest playbooks of any FitD or PbtA game I’ve read, and the scenarios are packed with pulpy horror and SF flavor, making it super easy to run. I didn’t love Penny Dreadful, the game’s main inspiration, so it took me a while to give the Between a shot, but it’s such a nasty, sexy, bloody gem. And its emergent mystery mechanics (same as in Brindlewood Bay and other Carved from Brindlewood games) are pretty much the only kind of RPG investigation I like to run or play now. The solution my players came up with was much more interesting than what I would have hammered out in advance.

What I’m less sure of: The Unscenes are cool, but much more of an acquired taste than the rest of the game. Unless everyone at the table is as interested in improvising details that don’t have a direct effect on the rest of the campaign, it could seem like a chore. I didn’t miss them, though, when we decided to skip Unscenes for the sake of time, so maybe this isn’t an issue at all. I just worry for groups that think they’re completely mandatory, and hit a wall right away.

Would I play again: I knew the two-shot that I ran wouldn’t do the game justice, but I at least wanted to give some players a taste of it between (pun not intended and I don’t know how to avoid it!) other campaigns. I really want to do a full campaign once the extra playbooks are out.

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Wild Talents 2e (23 sessions)

I’ve always loved the setting of Underground—a 90’s-era satirical edgelord RPG set in the dark future of 2021, where superpowered veterans with shattered psyches come home to find another warzone in a vaguely Judge-Dredd-ish Los Angeles. But I could never stand the rules, so I ran it using Wild Talents, a supers game using the One Roll Engine (ORE).

What I liked: Wild Talents’ core mechanic (a single roll can determine speed/initiative order, hit location, and damage/quality) is perfect for scary, “realistic” gun combat, where even a pistol could take you out with an unlucky shot. So many action scenes came down to someone just barely surviving or succeeding because of the way initiative panned out. And the powers give you a ton of customization options, without getting all the way into Champions levels of crunch. Since the Underground setting is a mix of superpowers and guns, it wound up being a pretty perfect system for it.

What I’m less sure of: Wild Talents puts a huge burden on the GM to keep players from wrecking the game with certain power builds and buys. Even coming up with a menu of powers (converted from Underground) to pick from didn’t solve this—you have to be ready to say no, a lot. Combat is also faster than some trad games, but still super slow.

Would I play again: It worked well for the super-specific campaign I wanted to run, but the level of crunch isn't something I'm usually interested in. The only reason I might touch ORE again is when Godlike 2e comes out, since the playtest reports sound like they're doing some great stuff.

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MechWarrior: Destiny (Three sessions so far)

Catalyst’s attempt to bring narrativism and shared authority to the BattleTech universe.

What I liked: I’m only a few sessions into running this campaign, but I love its use of Plot Points, which refresh at the beginning of each session, and that players (and the GM) can spend at any time to introduce plot twists. PP can also do some specific mechanical things in combat, and especially ‘Mech combat, but imo those aren’t as interesting as the more general use to redirect the narrative. I also think the streamlined ‘Mech combat rules—which a lot of BattleTech fans really dislike, and I get why—are perfect for the kind of campaign I’m after, where ‘Mech fights are more of an every two or three sessions sort of thing, and not the focus of the game. Right now we’re doing the campaign as a kind of Dune-with-’Mechs narrative, and having to stop to play actual BattleTech or Alpha Strike for hours would tilt the whole thing in favor of ‘Mech fights, and make the intrigue and other bits kind of a footnote.

What I’m less sure of: I respect that the creators were trying to go in a different direction from previous MechWarrior RPGs—way less trad, much more narrativist and indie. But it feels like a promising first draft of that, not a finished, playtested product. The default mode of play is almost GMless, but doesn’t give you the kinds of mechanics that would really make that work. For instance, play is usually supposed to proceed with each player narrating a whole scene or combat action before passing it to the next player, with the GM and NPCs going last. Players can spend a Plot Point to jump that order, going maybe second instead of fourth. But why? The game isn’t geared toward PvP, and you know you’re still going to act before NPCs. Why spend a precious resource for nothing? And there are related Traits that kick you either up or down in that order, but there’s no mechanical advantage or disadvantage there—just who’s holding the talking stick earlier or later. It pains me to do it, but we’re using the optional rules that pull initiative and other elements in a much more trad direction. I just don’t think the game fully works without those kinds of tweaks.

Would I play again: We’re likely doing at least 20 more sessions, so I’m all in. But after this campaign I’d probably set it aside for good—except for Plot Points, which I can see trying to pull into other trad systems.

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Alice is Missing (One-shot)

GM-less game played with text messages and cards (physical or digital), where you’re friends, lovers, or secret lovers of Alice, trying to find her before it’s too late.

What I loved: So much has been written and praised about this game that it’d be stupid for me to go into details. But for me, it completely lived up to the hype. What I didn’t expect is how great and integral the music is—it uses a YouTube video as a timer for the game, which starts with a stretch of moody, melancholy, straight-up beautiful music, that you’re just listening to before play starts. There’s more ambient music throughout (iirc), and then it comes back strong in the last stretch, increasing the tension. I’m not a fan of music during most RPGs (especially since I play almost everything remote), but since this game is silent I thought it was ingenious and really effective.

What I’m less sure of: One player didn’t fully commit, and kept trying to solve the mystery, including by introducing slam-dunk details, something the game explicitly tells you not to do. The whole thing is timed, with random cards getting flipped at specific intervals. So you can’t know what’s going on until closer to the end. Him not completely granting the game its premise and focusing more on story than RP and emotional stakes put more of a burden on the rest of us. But all that means is that it’s not a game for everyone, which is obvious, and fine!

Would I play again: I feel like I got the experience I was hoping for, so no.

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Alien Dark 2e (One-shot)

A pay-what-you-want game designed for SF horror, but mostly for doing Alien-setting stories with Cthulhu-Dark-inspired mechanics that are more narrativist, fast-moving, and low-prep than Free League’s Alien RPG.

What I liked: I’m already a big fan of the creator’s game Against the Dark Conspiracy, which is in some ways a less trad, more indie take on Delta Green, but that I think is doing a ton of smart things with espionage play and helping the GM run low-prep conspiracy narratives. Alien Dark does a great job applying those mechanics to Alien, particularly the way it reframes escalating Heat (the conspiracy knowing about and coming after you) as Danger, or the hive coming after you, and the overall situation falling apart. I like the Alien RPG a lot, but I think this game’s mechanics do a better job of building suspense and momentum en route to a fucked up climax.

What I’m less sure of: There are a lot of moving parts, so it takes a bit of system mastery for players to know what to do with different choices and points in front of them. Having the game’s creator run the game really helps with that, but I’d be nervous about trying to run it as a one-shot myself. A two- or three-shot, though, would be perfect.

Would I play again: Definitely. It’s on my list for future between-campaign games.

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Cold City 2e (Two-shot)

You’re members of a classified international group that hunts monsters—most of them products of or lured by the horrors of WWII—in 1950 Berlin.

What I liked: Cold City has some of the best vibes and setting details of any game I’ve played, with in-game documents that rival Delta Green’s for establishing a harsh premise and tone. And the hyper-collaborative mechanics are really fun, with so much shared authority that they shove the game in the general direction of GM-less, while still making the GM role important and satisfying. My favorite element, though, is how it mechanizes trust between PCs, letting players take advantage of Trust ratings, or exploit them, to help set up the PvP tension lurking beneath most scenes (every PC has Hidden Agendas that are likely to create conflicts at some point). I also love that Trust shifts a lot throughout even a single session, reinforcing the game’s Cold War espionage feel of strange alliances and sudden betrayals.

What I’m less sure of: There are some rules interactions that just don’t work, whether because of typos or accidental omissions. But the publisher is still updating the PDF right now, and I trust that the final version will lock everything down.

Would I play again: I’m not sure! Even though I only ran a two-shot, I feel pretty satisfied with that. But I’m interested in trying out its sister game Hot War (same system, but in a post-apocalyptic UK) once the 2e PDF goes out to backers.

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Cartel (One-shot)

A PbtA game about criminals, dirty cops, and their loved ones caught up in a cartel’s ugly melodramas. In this case it was reskinned for Star Wars scumbaggery.

What I liked: I’m a big fan of PvP, but only when a game gives you specific, well-conceived mechanics for that, to avoid hurt feelings or people just jumping straight to combat. Cartel’s conflicting agendas and playbook moves do a great job of setting PCs against each other, and making the inevitable confrontations exciting and unpredictable. And the game was a weirdly great fit for a Coruscant-set crime story!

What I’m less sure of: I think this game kicks ass. My only concern with it would be running it, and the itchy sense of cultural appropriation and/or stereotyping, as a white dude dipping into the game’s default Mexican cartel setting. That’s probably my problem, not the game’s, but I can see it veering into very dicey territory at a lot of tables.

Would I play again: I’m dying to run Cartel, but I'm a coward so I’d probably reskin it for another setting (like this GM did).

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Unknown Armies 3e (One-shot)

From the product blurb: “An occult horror RPG about broken people trying to fix an equally broken world.”

What I liked: The mental and emotional tradeoffs this game forces on your PC are fascinating and disturbing. So being better at fighting makes it harder to connect to people. Your character is always shifting based on stress and emotions, a ludicrous and even simulationist level of emo navel-gazing that I really respect.

What I’m less sure of: I just don’t really get the setting or magic, and I don’t think Greg Stolze’s voice-heavy writing style—alternating between surly, chummy, and intentionally vague or evasive—helps me. I know this game is a huge fan favorite, though, and I can see why. I just don’t fully dig (or really understand) its cosmology and approach to magic. And yet…

Would I play again: Anytime! As long as I don’t have to spend more time reading the lore.

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Tachyon Squadron (One-shot)

Dogfighting-centric FATE game about hotshot spacefighter pilots.

What I liked: I’m very FATE-skeptic—its do-anything looseness is admirable, but I think it just winds up harder to run for GMs than adjacent approaches, like PbtA or FitD. But this game uses the system elegantly and effectively, mainly because it locks things down within a narrow premise, and with specific, awesome dogfighting rules. Ship combat is, imo, bad-to-terrible in just about every other RPG. Somehow this game centers on ship combat, and nails it.

What I’m less sure of: I only played a one-shot, set in Star Wars, so I have no idea if the dogfighting would get boring across a campaign, or if the out-of-ship stuff would have the same issues as FATE does more generally (for me).

Would I play again: Absolutely, but I don’t have it in me to run it.

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The Decay (playtest version) (One-shot)

A setting-agnostic survival horror game that draws on Breathless and FitD mechanics. The game is in development, and scheduled to hit Kickstarter soon.

What I liked: I can’t be sure that everything I liked is still in the game, since the playtest session I was in happened months ago. But it takes the very lightweight Breathless chassis (everytime you roll to do something that ability degrades, until you can catch your breath for a bit) and fleshes it out with just enough mechanics to allow for longer play, or at least more play options and differentiation between PCs.

What I’m less sure of: I’m very specific about horror games—I want to die by the end of a one-shot! Or at least come very close. In the session I played it felt a little too easy to avoid or put off major consequences. But that could have just been a matter of lucky rolls. I’m excited to try the final version to see if I can get properly mangled.

Would I play again: I plan to!

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The Cluster (One-shot)

A “Sci-Fi PbtA game in which a ragtag Crew seek adventure (and profit) across a Cluster of seven star systems…lined by Ring games.”

What I liked: From the same creator as Alien Dark, who I think is an excellent designer and GM, the Cluster is in some ways another take on Starforged and Scum and Villainy. It has a ton of procedures to help generate jobs and twists and twists within twists, pushing all of the FitD buttons that light up my brain, but with PbtA mechanics. I especially like how it handles potential problems or opportunities during interstellar travel—something Starforged does okay, but this handles cleaner and in a less meandering way, that’s better for group play—and activities each PC can do every time you dock somewhere. Character creation is also really great. Everyone picks one culture (which system in the Cluster they’re from) and two playbooks, with no overlaps. So I was a Daredevil Grifter from a Dedicated planet, which was my way of doing a smuggler from a regimented, would-be-utopian society, while someone else was a Soldier Hustler from a Poor planet. The combinations are really compelling, and give you built-in hooks for places you’ll visit over the campaign.

What I’m less sure of: All those well-considered procedures add up to a lot of moving parts, and I couldn’t tell how long it might take, and what sort of players you’d need, to make it all work in a smooth fashion.

Would I play again: Definitely, though my regular groups would balk at the overall approach, so I’m more likely to just stare at the PDF or harvest it for parts.

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Fallen Blades / Endless Stars (Seven-session series)

You play OSR Jedi, essentially, in a lightweight drift of Into the Odd from the guy who wrote The Black Hack.

What I liked: A lot of games struggle with force powers, getting too in the weeds, too obsessed with balance, too caught up in quantifying and tying them to Dark and Light Side stuff. Fallen Blades lets you pick some force-related combat maneuvers you can always do, and some force powers governed by a usage die—if you roll a 1 or 2 on a d6, your power die goes down to a d4, and if you roll 1 or 2 on that d4, you’re wiped out until you can rest. It’s such a clean, smart push-your-luck mechanic, without having to track a bunch of points or figure out the most optimal way to use or conserve your powers.

What I’m not sure of: Having everyone play the same “class” doesn’t have to be a problem. Mythic Bastionland solves that by giving you tons of different types of knights you can play that all feel very different from each other, both in how they play and what they’re after. Fallen Blades is missing that sort of differentiation. It’s hard to not just be a bunch of stock Jedi, basically, with the same motivations and almost identical fighting styles and options. Just a handful of class-like choices could really give this game legs. Also, there’s a weird rules interaction where it’s generally pretty easy to deal with a bunch of guys with blasters, since you can deflect most of their damage using your mazeblade (lightsaber, basically). But you can’t deflect or block melee damage of any kind, so a single guy advancing on you with a broken bottle is much scarier than a squad of dudes with blasters. And we all thought it could use some of the gambits from Mythic Bastionland—which aren’t part of the Into the Odd SRD, so it makes sense they weren’t an option, but some kitbashing might work.

Would I play again: Only if the rules are tweaked or updated.

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Conan 2d20 (Homebrew) (22 sessions)

This is a very homebrewed and hacked 2d20 game, pulling rules in from all over the place—Conan, Infinity, Mutant Chronicles, even a little Achtung! Cthulhu.

What I liked: 2d20 can do a lot of neat stuff, making different weapons feel different and supporting a lot of PC customization and “tactical” combat options.

What I’m less sure of: After years of experience with 2d20, I think older implementations of the system get too bogged down for my tastes. Combat is slow, Momentum stops being narratively interesting and becomes pure math, and the game’s guidance and sample spends for Doom/Threat is sloppy and incentivizes antagonistic math—using it to raise a PC’s difficulty is devastatingly effective, and it’s trivial to pump up an NPC’s pool in order to get extra successes that feed back into the Doom pool. Mobs are also an ungainly nightmare, especially in conjunction with Doom spends. Star Trek Adventures and Dune put more emphasis on cooler, more narrative-shifting Threat spends, but also streamline the system in crucial ways. I still like those versions of 2d20, but the Conan/Infinity/etc. flavor is kind of a drag.

Would I play again: The campaign is ongoing (I think?), but most of us want to shift to a slimmer version of 2d20, or something else in the same setting, with different rules.

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CHEW (One-shot)

A FitD game, based on the comic, where you “Take a bite out of crime in a foodie crime drama about cops, crooks, cooks, cannibals, and clairvoyants in a clucked-up world.”

What I liked: There are some great twists on FitD mechanics, to streamline and push the system in a more cartoonish, madcap direction. And some of the playbook elements are genuinely funny.

What I’m less sure of: I haven’t read the comic, and I don’t really love comedy RPGs, so I’m just not the audience. It was a lot of fun as a one-shot, but there’s nothing about it that makes me want to give it another try.

Would I play again: It was fun, but nope.

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Swords of the Serpentine (17 Sessions)

A GUMSHOE “sword & sorcery game of daring heroism, sly politics, and bloody savagery, set in a fantasy city rife with skullduggery and death.”

What I liked: The setting is perfectly conceived for RPG antics, and it has some great Investigative Abilities that let players take narrative authority to introduce setting or plot elements, or just shift things in a new direction.

What I’m less sure of: I don’t want to get into fights about GUMSHOE so I’ll just say it’s not the system for me, even in what I think is its best iteration. But I’m particularly bummed about how boring combat can be, especially when dealing with crowds of mooks, where it all kinda just turns into math, figuring out how many points to spend on attacks in order to take out enough of them to get Refresh points to recover General Abilities. I get what they were going for, and lots of people love it (and GUMSHOE more generally) so I’m sure it’s a me thing.

Would I play again: The campaign is ongoing, but this put me off of trying other GUMSHOE stuff.

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Troika! (Two-shot)

An OSR “stand-alone science-fantasy roleplaying game where you and your cosmopolitan group of fellow travellers explore the ends of the multiverse.”

What I liked: The initiative system is a blast. You put tokens for PCs and NPCs—usually more than one for each—in a bag, along with a “Turn Ends” token, and draw them randomly. The result is chaotic and awesome, and mechanically clever. Aiming as your first action, for example, gives you a bonus to hit, but only matters if your second action gets drawn before “Turn Ends” comes up. Delaying just means you put your token back in the bag, and there are different kinds of tokens you might pull for NPCs (more than one acts, or one of the GM’s choice, etc.).

What I’m less sure of: I’m not a big fan of OSR games where every PC is a bumbling dufus constantly tripping over their own feet, but Troika! was maybe the most “everyone’s always missing” game I’ve ever played. Since it’s ultimately a zany comedy game (albeit with some spooky setting bits), the missing is kinda fine, but also tedious and drags things out. And I pity our poor magic-users, both of whom had a less than 50% chance to cast anything, and, because of some goofy rules interactions, were both better off stabbing a guy with a knife than trying to do their fun and potentially useful magic.

Would I play again: No, unfortunately, and it soured me on trying Longshot City, too!

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The Gas Station (One-shot)

A horror scenario and micro-RPG: “A simple d6 system that will get you in the game in minutes. Take control of the INVESTIGATOR, MERCENARY, OR OCCULTIST, as you try to survive twisted environments and horrifying monster.”

What I liked: The scenario was pretty fun, and I liked how open-ended the magic is.

What I’m less sure of: Simple d6 is a weird and imo disjoined system. It wants to be stripped-down and almost narrativist (multiple success/fail tiers, abilities that are open to interpretation, etc.), but it also has big HP pools, armor, and some pretty traditional, zoomed-in combat mechanics. And at least in this iteration, a really bad class-based approach. The scenario has you play ordinary people in what amounts to a gas-station-set horror movie. But you pick from Investigator, Mercenary, or Occultist. You know, regular folks! And since we had four players we had to double up, so we wound up with two Occultists—half the group could cast spells, and so weren’t really surprised or all that unnerved when supernatural things started happening. We made the best of it, and the finale was great, in large part because two of us sort of forced things into an interesting place (that the rules were fighting). But I don’t think Simple d6 is good for anything. Index Card RPG would always be better. And the fact that the creator went with those adventurer-ass classes for this scenario is design malpractice.

Would I play again: I’m not sure anyone should, at least not with Simple d6.

Hey everyone,

My name is Maitham, and I’m part of Board & Beyond, Iraq’s first dedicated tabletop RPG community. Over the past two years, we’ve been organizing public game nights, GM-led campaigns, and beginner-friendly sessions to introduce TTRPGs to new players here.

A lot of our community discovered RPGs through shows like Critical Role, video games, and online actual plays — and interest has been growing fast. We started with D&D because of accessibility, but we’re now expanding into other systems like Cyberpunk RED, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, World of Darkness, and indie RPGs.

We’re reaching out to the Reddit community for: • Advice on growing a TTRPG community in an emerging region • Recommendations for publishers or creators who support community play • Tips on running intro-friendly sessions for new players • Indie RPGs, cyberpunk systems, or creators we should look into • Stories from others who built local RPG scenes from scratch

If any publishers, designers, or content creators are reading this, we’d love to connect. Our goal is simple: make tabletop RPGs accessible, welcoming, and visible in Iraq.

We regularly share our events and sessions on Instagram (@bnbd.iq), and we’re always happy to answer questions or share what we’ve learned so far.

Thanks for reading — and thanks for keeping this hobby alive everywhere.

Hello guys,

I wanted to know the following:

If you had complete freedom to change anything in a new version of your favorite RPG, what would it be?

In my case, I think it would be quite controversial nowadays, because I would reduce Runequest's connection to the Glorantha setting, and make it more like the third edition, from the Avalon Hill era, rather than the current edition, “Roleplaying in Glorantha.”

To be clear, I think Chaosium's work with Glorantha is brilliant, but while I recognize all the merits of the writing and accumulated tradition of the setting, I've never been able to get into it completely.

And you, what would you change in that RPG you love and send to the assembly line for the next book?

Thank you all for your answers.

This is a rant:

My players stood me up again. I know it might be wrong of me to be sad, and many even made fun of it, saying it's just another activity and shouldn't affect me so much, but it's really demotivating. Partly, maybe it's because I have imposter syndrome, or maybe it's because my tables aren't really for everyone, but I see other GMs running tables so often and with players so interested in their games that it makes me sad not to be able to have something like that.

I'm only sad because they told me they could play today, but I've been waiting for 30 minutes, and now they just haven't shown up. They're not even replying to messages. I shouldn't take this seriously, but it makes me sad because I'm too emotional. I'm even thinking about quitting GMing for at least a few years after this huge disappointment.

For games that share a common system, such as BRP, Gumshoe, Year Zero, 2d20, etc, which ones do you think are the best implementation of that system? What are the worst?

TL;DR: what's your opinion on 6 cultures of play by the retired adventures: are they a useful simplification, or a harmful oversimplification?

In many discussions about TTRPG games I've seen various (strong) opinions people have about 6 cultures.

Some call them zodiac signs of RPG, unnecessary labels. Some worship them like sacred texts.

What's your case?

I can start by saying I really like them and knowing these cultures made me better understand this hobby and made talking about it much easier. For context, I've been playing (mostly as a GM) for 7 years now.

EDIT: here's the link to the original article for those who don't know: https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.com/2021/04/six-cultures-of-play.html?m=1

Hi, ive been thinking about playing a one-shot with my younger cousins. I`ve considered D&D, but got told that it is too complex, and i should loof for something simpler. Any reccomendations?

I just finished reading The Book of Monsters by Draw Steel. It has something wonderful in it – a list of combat objectives:
-Diminish Numbers
-Defeat a Specific Foe
-Get the Thing!
-Destroy the Thing!
-Save Another
-Escort
-Hold Them Off
-Assault the Defenses
-Stop the Action
-Complete the Action

Thinking that heroic RPGs are built on the tripod of combat, exploration, and social interaction, what would the objectives for "exploration" and "social interaction" look like?

Crunchy tactical combat but narrative dialogue

For me it was when loot from optional puzzle chest turned into whole side quest line because player managed to sell loot in place where he didn't have access by pretending to be someone else by rolling extremely high on deception and persuasion several times (in which doesn't have any bonus) and buyer failing int check miserably.

Result was series of extremely unlikely and funny interactions that everyone agreed should have consequences so I wrote in whole unplanned quest line because everything was too good not to have epilogue.

What are some of your recent great stories?