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I’ve played tons of games both rpgs and board games and I’m kinda curious as to when something stops being a rpg and starts just being a board game, there are campaign board games after all. How do you properly discern between them?

I have run a few ttrpg games before, as well as been a player in various games. In those games I saw a pattern where specific people who in all other situations are fully capable to come at the agreed time show up hours later with seemingly no explanation, as if their transportation got stuck in a wormhole for an hour or two. I have no idea what it could be because i’ve never been hours late, and if late I could provide a clear reason (usually public transport issues).

I’ve seen various jokes online about players being late to D&D, and to me it seemed like people were later when D&D was played compared to Cyberpunk and BESM.

Have you experienced this before, and do you have any ideas why? Please share your thoughts.

EDIT: I seem to have not made this clear, but these people can show up on time to other events, it just seems like ttrpgs are treated like parties where you can show up whenever.

EDIT 2: Thanks for all your support, I recently found a schedule-obsessed group of fellow autistic people to play BESM4e with, so for the foreseeable future I won’t be having this issue as I play my Synchrotron character in Toaru’s Academy City.

Hot on the heels of the very well received White Static, Dry Land, Dino Island and Permafrost supplements, comes a new (and horrible) situation for your Survivors.

BLACK RAIN

(https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/573844/BLACK-RAIN--an-environmental-adventure-for-T2K)

The first drops struck the road like ink.

They landed on helmets, headscarves, canvas awnings, flour sacks, the backs of animals, the face of a child looking up before her mother dragged her under cover. A soldier wiped rain from his cheek and stared at the grey smear across his fingers. Someone said it was only rain.

Black water hammered on roofs and ran from broken gutters in oily ropes. It soaked coats, blankets, bandages, carts, firewood, grain sacks and prayer books. The town divided itself in minutes between those who had reached shelter and those left outside. The church doors opened, then jammed half-shut against the press of refugees. The schoolhouse filled with bodies and panic. The militia post barred its door. A boy fell face-first into a black puddle and his mother hesitated before touching him.

At the storehouse, rainwater burst through patched canvas and turned three sacks of flour into grey paste. At the clinic, runoff spilled from a cracked roof into the clean water barrel. At the well, an old carpenter dragged tarred canvas over the stone lip, only to watch black water run down the bucket rope and vanish into the dark below.

The downpour lasted less than an hour.

By dusk, the town was black. Roofs dripped. Chickens shivered. Cattle coughed over spoiled feed. People stripped in the cold and burned coats, blankets and sacks in smoky pits, then argued over whether the smoke would poison them again. The doctor marked a clean side and a dirty side inside the clinic, but fear crossed the line faster than chalk could hold it. Nobody knew what could be touched. Nobody knew what could be eaten. Nobody knew who was safe.

That night, the well was guarded by two boys with rifles too large for them. In the church, a child began vomiting and every adult nearby pretended not to hear.

By morning, the rain would be gone from the sky, but not from the town. It would remain in the mud, the straw, the folded blankets, the pump handle, the spoiled grain, and in the blood.

Black Rain is an environmental adventure for Twilight: 2000 about radioactive, ash-stained rain falling on a small settlement already weakened by war, hunger and displacement. It provides rules for exposure, contaminated supplies, spoiled water, shelter discipline and delayed sickness, then frames those rules inside a town crisis where food, wells, authority and compassion all begin to fail.

A coat saves someone, then becomes dangerous. A barrel may hold water or poison. A sack of grain may feed a family, kill a family, or start a fight. The player characters may save lives, impose order, exploit panic, secure clean water, escort survivors away, or simply try to keep their own gear safe.

At the base i learn and read the guardian rule book of Call of cthullu because i didn't want to play DnD, so i try to learn to GM for this game. but between the lack of people intress and my group who seems to doesn't care about me i thaught "Hey, why not trying to play rpg ?"

because yeah i never actually play a role play game, i am just a guardian for Call of cthullu and i love reading book of rule of different games to learn more.

the thing is : i am not intressted by DnD, i don't want to play it ->the medieval fantasy trop annoy me, and from what i read, the experience seems not enought narative and you just roll dice to level up your character statistic.
But here the catch : if i don't want to play DnD i unfortunately cut myself from the huge majority of rpg players

And wenn i do find a group who intress me like for exemple there was people searching for Dragonfly motel : i was super excited , but they say their session was not open to begginer, despite me reading with attention the rule book 😭

So i feel like if i don't create myself a group for roleplay and GM for a group of person nobody will wants to play with me

I know 5e, and pathfinder 2e both have one but i want to know which systems have really good ones outside those two. i have the deluxe set for mothership and that seems like a good beginner box, but what else we got?

I'm more than familiar with games that have the idea of multiple characters per player built in. Whether you're looking at troupe-style play in Ars Magica, funnels in DCC, or character trees in Dark Sun, it's not exactly a new concept.

That said, I ran into a new-to-me concept in the Star Trek 2d20 system, that being the ability to conjure a new secondary character on the fly during play. A common problem in many games not about a plucky group of wandering adventurers is that a character may not make sense to join a given scene, adventure, or expedition, but to leave them out sidelines a player. Most games contrive ways to keep the player involved in the game, or have some kind of rules or guidance to find a way to involve everyone in every adventure, and for good reason! But Star Trek uses a different tack: just make a new character that fits, and run them instead.

Is a player playing a medical officer and there's no good reason they should join the away team on this diplomatic mission to a hostile polity? Boom, Jerry the redshirt now exists, with a basic level of competency that allows him to actively participate without being dead weight. Depending on the situation and the stats of the primary character, he's actually usually a net boon to the situation. He's not as detailed as a primary character, but in exchange he's lightning fast to create. An experienced player could probably make a new secondary character in under a minute. Then, the more people spotlight Jerry the redshirt, the more detailed he becomes (to a point). It's practical, helps flesh out the crew of a Federation starship, and echos how side characters work on a TV show. It also creates a group of existing characters with history to promote to primary character status when someone's character dies, retires, or gets transferred. It's honestly brilliant.

With all that said, I highly doubt that Star Trek 2d20 is the only system to do something like this. Are there other games that do a similar thing? I'm not looking for games that have rules for having multiple characters and switching between them on the fly, but actually conjuring new characters out of whole cloth the moment you decide you need one. Whether this is a core feature of a system, like in Star Trek 2d20, or something from a splat book, or even 3rd party/homebrew, I'm interested in seeing the different ways this has been done.

It's just a little bit of a whine, but maybe someone has felt the same way. Last year, I started playing with a new party, and the games are amazing. However, various real-life events drained more energy from me than I had, defying all the laws of energy conservation, and I became that player who always sits silently. If in the beginning I made cool decorated notes after each session, now I hardly remember all our important NPCs. Once I fell asleep in the middle of the session (we play online), I can't even imagine how the master felt after that. And damn, I like to play, I sometimes think about our story, it's one of my few hobbies in life, and I try to tell the master at the end of sessions that everything was cool and I'm happy. But nevertheless, I'm still that player who only does something when he's directly asked to, and in any other situation my brain can't generate a single thought. And I don't want to "take a break from gaming", I want to take a break from all my other works in life, but it's not possible yet. Meh.

(I initially posted this over on the r/oneringrpg subreddit, but have decided to post this here as well)

Mae govannen!

On Sunday, me and my usual troupe of players ran through the starter module for The One Ring 2E, Over Hill and Under Hill, and I thought it might be nice to post up a review. If you want my final notes/ a TL;DR, it'll be at the bottom of this post!

Initial Notes

I've been a GM for ttrpgs for 10+ years, having been running things since High School. I've mostly run D&D 5e and Pathfinder 1e, but have been looking to branch out and try some new systems. I was first drawn to The One Ring after reading about it last year. After finishing a Pathfinder campaign, I spent some time going over other systems and felt this would be a good fit.

On a personal note, I've been a Tolkien fan ever since I saw the films as a kid. I've loved his world, and have spent a lot of time poring over his books and the lore of Middle-Earth over the years. I'd say I have a relatively deep understanding of the setting.

The Players

I offered some pregens to my players, but also let them make their own characters. A couple of them took that opportunity, and found it to be relatively quick and easy, while also giving a lot of choice. For our party, we had a Ranger Champion, an Elf Messenger, a Hobbit Warden, and a Barding Captain. The Captain and the Warden were custom characters, whereas the Messenger and Captain were the pregens (that I had made!). Following the advice of the book, the players' Target Numbers were made by subtracting their Attributes from 18, instead of 20 for a one-shot.

Tabletop Info

We used Roll20 for this one-shot, using their sheets. I would say that the sheets are adequate, with alright automation. I think that Roll20 is a bit behind the times, but at the moment I can't really switch to a better VTT.

Things We Liked

Overall, this module presents a really solid foundation for the systems of The One Ring. It introduced us to the Journey, Combat, and Council mechanics in ways that I found mostly satisfactory. On my end, I also found prep and running the game to be a breeze compared to something like Pathfinder or D&D 5e - building NPC stat blocks took all of five minutes, and they didn't have particularly complicated abilities for combat. Combat was my biggest worry - my players, coming from Dungeon Games, are more used to the tactical combat grid. However, they all seemed to enjoy it greatly - one player even remarked that it had just enough crunch to make enough decisions, while also feeling very lightweight.

The Journey mechanics were also very well received. Most other journey and exploration mechanics in other games they have tried left something to be desired, and so this felt like a breath of fresh air. One player wished that there could have been more encounters while traveling, as they had a relatively easy time succeeding at the Exploration roll. This was, of course, a consequence of their Target Numbers being lower.

When it came to more free-form play, players liked the numbers of skills that they had. They also enjoyed the kind of granularity when it came to character customization. They also enjoyed the setup of the world, and felt that the module was tonally very consistent with Tolkien. I will say, as a Tolkien fan, the game was much more like the books than the films.

Things That Could Have Been Better

The biggest problem my players had was with the Council system. Part of this was user error - I didn't quite know how to run it well, having never done so before - but the other part was the way it was presented in the module. In this module, in order to get information from a child in a ruined village, it suggests running a Council. However, this felt very low-stakes for the system, to the point of it feeling unnecessary. The abstraction of the Council also felt odd for the situation. A couple of my players enjoyed it and understood it, but one player did not like it whatsoever. I believe that it may be better suited to larger and more important situations, rather than the somewhat small situation presented.

TL;DR

I really enjoyed running this. Honestly, this was the most fun I've ever had GMing something. I also did not feel so out of place or pressured, and I felt energized rather than exhausted when it came to running it. I also felt prep was so easy, and involved things I enjoyed doing.

My players also enjoyed this system, and said they would enjoy a longer campaign. I would be very excited to run a campaign - especially because it will necessarily involve mechanical systems not touched upon in the one-shot - and am considering doing so in future.

All in all, I would recommend this system immensely, especially if you're looking for something lighter-weight and are a big fan of Tolkien. I don't think you need to know everything about Middle-Earth, but it's definitely for people who are at least familiar with the setting.

Hello, I'm new to GMing and started my first campaign. I consider myself a fairly creative person, I like to write stories, make settings, and do art for said stories/ settings. I had a general worldbuilding project that I thought could make an interesting setting for an RPG campaign. It is a sword and sorcery/dark fantasy setting inspired mainly by Conan the Barbarian, King Kull, etc. (and a bit of Runescape suprsingly) since im not the biggest fan of high fantasy settings (personal preference). I chose to run it in DnD 5e since it was a system I had played before as a player and was a favourite among my friends who were my first group. I planned for it to be heavily homebrewed to fit the genre.

Now small disclaimer: Upon feedback from my group and later realisations I feel like I didn't establish the tone/genre of the setting I wanted to run (fairly low fantasy, dangerous, rare but powerful magic, personal stakes yadda yadda tha usual sword and sorcery shtick).

However, as we kept playing, I felt like I could never reach the tone I was going for and that the campaign was slowly switching into high fantasy. At session zero, while I did feel like I explained the setting well, I didn't impose many restrictions on the players since, being a dnd player myself, I felt like it would be too limiting. For example, before we started I loosely stated where certain non human dnd races can be found but in truth I wanted to have a small amount of non human races that function completely different, however if I said "you can't be an orc/dwarf/elf/etc but you can be a minotaur/goliath/etc" I would get a negative reaction so I ended up allowing all of the races. During the campaign, while they players got to choose whatever they wanted, I didn't know how to make it really fit in, so on my part, there was neglect there.

The campaign went along, but as it went on, I felt like I was enjoying myself less and less. However, I am happy to hear that my player enjoyed some parts of it, like the combat encounters and the dungeon on our last (8th) session.

Now we said we'll take a break for summer and continue after so this is where I'm at. I am not in any mood to continue said campaign, but I feel like my players will be disappointed if it ends so abruptly.

I want to revisit the setting and genre since i feel like i put a lot of effort into the world, so I've picked up Barbarians of Lemuria since it honestly looms really cool and very homebrew friendly, and I plan to run a couple of one shots with a different group and eventually the same one to get used to the system. I plan on making predate characters/templates that I feel fit the genre/setting more to get the players in the mood.

Adapting the setting into BoL was very easy since several tropes are really similar. I've already made some test characters and run some combat to see how the mechanics function, and I'm getting really into it, so I can't wait to try it with other people.

Just wanted to share my experience and hopefully get some advice as a new GM.

(Also, sword and sorcery themed TTRPGs recommendations would be appreciated)

Hello.

I have ultimately come to realization that, if I am to run a game in my own setting, no existing more-or-less traditional RPG will work with consideration of the very wacky metaphysics and variety of my universe. Thus, I accepted that I would either have to write my own game (and never be able to run a game then because I would be doing this till my final breath), or run it in one of the more narrative-driven systems.

I am aware of mainly FATE, Cortex Prime and Genesys when it comes to entirely generic and flexible games, but if there're other options, you can also mention them in the comments.

In the end, I wanted to know what are the main advantages and disadvantages of each compared to each other? I've read and been told that Cortex is a more "mechanically interesting FATE" and that Genesys is "a bit closer to a traditional RPG", but that is pretty much it, and I'd like to know a bit more before committing, I don't have that much free time to learn all three in full unfortunately.

^{(I would like to mention that, from just skimming, I do like the visual design of Cortex Prime, that's about it})

EDIT: Nobody mentioned it in this post, but in a different place I've been unironically offered to try Storypath Ultra and I am seriously thinking that it may be what I need, especially since I love Storytelling. How bad of an idea it is?