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A few years ago, I started building my own system. I had a friend who used to watch what I was putting together. Her suggestions were always about shaping a part of the system to be closer to D&D – and I didn't want that, but I kept going anyway.

She moved to another city and we stopped talking as much since we used to talk more in person. So I went back to doing things the way I wanted. Despite her tips turning the system into something more generic, she had great insights that I appreciated. But without her around, I had no one to analyze the system and discuss it with me, so I started talking to AIs – not to create, but to analyze.

In both cases – my friend and the AI – there was a serious problem in common: how was I going to sell this? They'd say no one would have fun with this kind of roll, this kind of fantasy, this and that. And that drove me crazy. I lost my sense of direction and did exactly what my friend used to do – I removed things I thought were cool because they didn't "make sense," I gave up on things that other systems hadn't already done, and I was inflating my system with fantasies that didn't even fit the game because I "should have something to please every type of person."

I still loved building it, but I was under pressure – I couldn't take references I liked, I couldn't do things the same way as other systems, I had to simplify my stuff, I had to make an extremely detailed rulebook with art and blah blah blah.

Until I realized: what my imagination wanted couldn't be sold as something good on a large scale. Then it hit me – from the very beginning, I didn't want to make something to sell. I wanted to make something for my friends. To fill it with references we all like, to copy mechanics without worrying about copyright, to make something small-scale just for us. And that didn't make everything I had already done any 'less valid' or 'less artful.' I tortured myself for months with this mindset that I, alone, had to balance things on a gigantic scale, that I had to surpass famous systems – I even started hating other indie systems and only looked at them to see what I hadn't done in mine.

Anyway, I just want to remind you: if you're going through this, even if you're planning to sell, you don't need to treat yourself like a company. You don't need to set aside what you think is cool because it's "too complicated" or whatever. People play Yu-Gi-Oh like it's simple – your system, they'll handle it. And remember why you're doing it – whether it's to have fun, create new mechanics, tell your story, or even sell – but don't treat yourself like a billion-dollar company with an experienced team.

Edit: When I talk about making something unique and complex, I don't mean making something sloppy or with bad design and saying "it's fine" – no. What I meant was innovations that might seem bad to people who never step outside the norm – not things like F.A.T.A.L.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been jumping around different TTRPG systems for a while, and I’m starting to realize it’s probably not the games that are the issue - it’s 100% my group.

I’ve been the forever DM for my school mates since year 10. I honestly don’t mind DMing most of the time; I genuinely love building worlds and creating cool environments for people to play in. But looking back, I’ve basically spent the last two years acting as a drama manager instead of actually playing a game.

To give you some insight into the dynamic, the wheels started coming off after secondary school:

• The Gatekeeping & Ultimatums: I tried to bring in an outside friend who was super passionate about TTRPGs just to sit in on a session. One guy in our group, "K", absolutely despised him and threw a massive tantrum: "If he comes, I'm leaving." The rest of the party was mostly indifferent, but they backed K up anyway, so it became a massive pain.
• The Toxic Vibes vs. The Best Player: To be completely transparent, K was a massive contradiction. When we were 14/15, he literally tried to use the N-word as a "plot point." We shut that down, but he was also consistently, abjectly rude to another quieter player in our group, "Lo" (who mostly just tagged along for the social hang). K eventually bullied Lo to the point where Lo just quit. I struggled to address it properly because K and I were close, but also because K was hands-down our best player. He always hosted, he was the most engaged, and he actually fell into the heavy roleplay that I love to do.
• Deep-Rooted Group Issues: Because K was the loudest voice, it masked the fact that the rest of the group had major issues too. Even when K was gone or behaving, we had constant issues with bundling, lack of engagement, and people just treating it like a casual hangout where they happened to have a character sheet open.

By year 12, everyone split off into college while K and I went to 6th form. We drifted, had a massive falling out in January, and he left the campaign for good. Another one of my players ("Od") recently got his girlfriend pregnant. Real-life stuff and scheduling hell have just completely taken over.

Right now, we're trying to play Cyberpunk RED because the remaining guys love the video game. But we’ve managed a three fucking sessions in six months.

Every ounce of momentum just dies when there’s a two-month gap between games. It feels stale, and I’m losing my mind planning stuff knowing nothing is going to happen. On top of that, CPR is a struggle for me to run. I rely heavily on loose improv, passing notes, and Theater of the Mind, but CPR is so crunch-heavy with range-bands and cover mechanics that it feels like a slog.

Honestly, I’m looking at D&D again and wondering if I only started hating it because I was burning out on high-school drama. I way prefer sci-fi or urban settings over traditional high fantasy, but at this point, I just want a table where people actually want to play the game.

So here’s my dilemma:

I’ve got about a year and a bit until I head off to University, where I know I can find a dedicated RPG society with people my own age. Do I just wait it out?

My local library actually runs a D&D thing, and there's a local gaming cafe in town, but I'm terrified of two things. First, the classic stereotype that I’m going to end up stuck at a table with some uber-smelly neverwashers.

Second, the social suicide factor. I love TTRPGs because you get to completely be yourself, but my town isn't huge. If my acquaintances, or girls from my class walk into the library and catch me in public doing a voice and talking about "Baltazar the Evil Hobgoblin," I think I would genuinely sink straight into the ground and die.

Has anyone else had to break away from their childhood friend group to find a "proper" gaming table? Did you go local or online, and how did you deal with the cringe factor of playing in public spaces?

A few years ago, when my two friends and I were teenagers, we had a lot of free time and played RPG regularly. I wasn't a good GM, but my players were incredible. They were a group that always took action and moved the world toward consequences; the story would mold itself around their actions, and they also suffered from the changes in the story.

Years passed, and now I play with these same two players much less often. But when we do play, I feel like I'm the one begging us to play RPG and spend time together, even though they also like RPG and going out. Yet every session ends with me feeling frustrated, because I feel like that GIF of a clown dancing in front of the king—where I have to provide all the entertainment and they just have to watch. I'm the one who has to give the pushes, not just the world.

Before, they would go, fight, explore, investigate, discuss the lore. Now they barely create their characters and procrastinate on filling out the sheets, picking anything at all.

I'm fed up with this culture where the GM isn't a player too, but rather a big babysitter who has to manage the players' actions and serves as a clown, instead of someone who also wants to have fun.

I don't know if it was time, if my GMing has gotten bad, or if they've just grown tired, but they still ask me about RPG and invite me to hang out. I know some might say it's work fatigue, but honestly, they act the same way with digital games.

At the end of every session, I always think about never wanting to GM again, because it generates a huge demotivation in me. I don't know if it's them who have lost their spark or if I'm GMing poorly. I GM even worse with these thoughts that I'm just a clown, that they don't really care, and that they make no effort when I have to create an entire story. I feel like an asshole saying this. I think my mood depends a lot on how excited the others are to see what I have to show. Especially one of them, who gives me disapproving looks during boring sessions, as if they weren't also responsible for the fun.

Before, I could invent a horrible session out of nowhere because we were bored, and thanks to them, it would turn into a proper secondary campaign. Today, even the best sessions turn into an afternoon cartoon that I have to push the story through.

Edit: I had already talked to them about this in those moments of vulnerability, several times actually. They say they understand and know the effort I'm talking about, and I really think they see it and try, but their "trying" is more like making an extra effort in X scenes, or in one whole session, and then stopping. Even when I try to praise and give bonuses for it. I've also tried stopping the bonuses and it remains the same. Sometimes it gets to a point where they just want to die in the game and they don't even hide it well. Before the session starts, they always want to go get food instead of doing it on the way to my house. I don't know why they would agree to play, come over, and free up their schedule for something they're not even enjoying. I invite them to play but I don't insist if they don't want to or can't, just like sometimes they also ask me, but the story repeats itself every time.

I insist so much on them because I like them. But many of you in the comments are right, maybe they're friends for other things but not for RPG anymore.

Not trying to be arrogant, but I blame TikTok a little, because I've tested putting music at full volume and constantly describing epic scenes and they focus more. But an RPG can't just be epic scenes. And responding to other comments, we're not a fixed group for one system, unless it's a long campaign. We've tested D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, among other indies, even some about anime and superheroes."

Hello!

To crack down on debt my wife and I are moving into to a home of a friend who had a major life change so all 3 of us can annihilate debt.

The issue? He doesn't have a spot in his house for my book shelf of over 200 TTRPG books that I have been collecting over the past 15+ years.

My plan - Store these in a closet upstairs for the two years we plan to be there. But what is the best way?

Websites and articles I am reading on book storage is typically catered to paper backs or hardcover novels that are half the size of a standard 8x11 TTRPG core book. So most of their recommendations cant handle the pure weight of it.

Does anyone in the community have tips that can help me? I am specifically asking for tips of containers that can stack and hold my books long term.

To pre-emptively respond to suggestions I have seen on other (outside rpg) posts of other users asking the same.

1. Im trying not to pay for a storage unit. We are moving into this house to crack down on expenses and make large payments on loans and CC debt that we can be debt free by 30. (The two year mark)

2. I have thought about selling some of the books to lighten the load, but my wife and my 10+ players have dissuade me from that idea. Since im not going to realistically make money on selling these, id be removing books from my collection that may be harder to acquire after the dust settles. Hence the long term storage.

I know this is not ideal, but i appreciate all advice.

I hope this is on-topic enough to not get removed?

Excuse poor grammar, im typing this on my phone.

All my TTRPG existence, I've been a victim of my own predilection for creating dungeon campaigns that have a fairly credible origin story. I have no problem at all being a player in anyone else's campaign in which the dungeon is just there, no explanation required; I'm a 100% booster. But when it comes to my own stuff, I need to have a plausible reason why the thing is there at all. Perhaps I should never have read Bruce Galloway's book on fantasy wargaming and taken his counsel so close to heart, but there it is.

In my latest go of it, an ancient civilization falls victim to a cataclysm of earthquakes and lava ruptures and so on, and a substantial portion of that civilization is swallowed by the earth. Thousands of years later, the vale in which this took place is now a peaceful wood of tall trees and chirpy little birds. Hobgoblins use the wood to hunt gobos for use as something a tier less than indentured servants. As a result of the hobgoblins' presence, humans have built a fortress along a river on the opposite side of the wood, and a village of some forty edifices followed soon thereafter.

The upshot is that there were a handful of survivor pockets among the hundreds of thousands consumed in the cataclysm. Over the millennia, some of these people learned to live in the darkness, cultivating fungi for use as food and light, and finding underground springs for water sources. They built their own subterranean civilization and forgot about topside, treating it as a place to be shunned the way you and I shun deep water without the use of scuba gear. Other groups fell far deeper below, became more bestial, and turned to cannibalism for survival. These two groups are - perhaps obviously - at odds with one another; the upper civilization trying in vain to cultivate the savages, the lower bestial population seeing the upper folk as a mere food source. So now you have the logical basis for catacombs of tunnels, reservoirs, and all the lovely dungeon characteristics in between.

My hangup is that it's become boring. I want only to create enough material that will draw the players' interest, and not glaze their eyes over with things like "...in year 511, Mingog wrote a meticulous volume on the approximately nine hundred types of fungi and their various uses..." I don't need voluminous appendices, just material that will move the story forward from the viewpoint of the PCs.

(You've fortitude in you if you made it to this point) Q: What tried-and-true methods might any of you possess for creating plausible dungeon environments without dragging along the tendency to back it all up with 3000 words that won't mean a handful of ogre dandruff to a player?

Note: I've tried creating dungeon environments with no background material whatsoever, but the inevitable questions follow: How did this even come to be? Why is all this treasure lying about? Wouldn't someone have appropriated it already before this? Surely all these creatures down here would have wiped each other out long before?

Which rpg has your favourite faction mechanics or rules, their creation and interactions of the PC with them, personally and/or through the world around him? And what do you like about those rules? By faction I mean not a single person, but a group. It could be an army, an organisation or something similar.

Tbh, I haven't found any that piqued my interest so far, but to be fair I haven't played too many rpgs. I play solo only. I am looking for some detailed rules for faction creation and interactions with them.

Looking for some study materials.

For moodboard, take Escaflowne and the Xeno series where the meat of the media is centered around the mechs, but the pilot themselves are too notable fighters capable of facing armies and monsters on foot. I want to set a large armies game where the players tends to play more as squad leaders than Lancer's "the mech is just a DnD character with a cool cosplay armor" general tendencies.

Exalted comes close, but the rules for warstriders are almost footnotes so the weight pulls almost entirely towards the heroes on land. I hear positively about Wares Blade but basically any and all information about the rules themselves is so scant that makes study impossible.

Edit: Seeing all the suggestions, i thank you guys already but i should specify that i mean specifically non-mech combatants.

You're seated at the head of the table, pages of half-scrawled notes in disarray around you. Your players have latched onto a tiny fragment you said once, half an hour ago, and their investigation into the disappearance of Brynn the baker has ground to a halt. It was only one bad assumption, but now the fun is draining from the room as everyone slowly stops speaking, turns to face you, and sits silently waiting for the next breadcrumb.

This is the worst. The absolute worst. In this essay, I will...

... extend on the work from other designers before me in designing robust, fun mystery scenarios with some easy to follow and transferable rules. Using this method allows you to turn all your worldbuilding lore into actionable moments of player agency at the table.

Let's begin with the Three Clue Rule Three Types of Clues.

Clue Descriptions

No, this is not the foundational text that you can find on the Alexandrian, but we will be using that. First, let's define three different types of clues that can be used in a mystery scenario. I'm going to focus on the verbs that these clue imply.

1. Pointer Clues

These are the structural elements of your mystery. In the Gumshoe family of games, these are referred to as core clues. When the party arrives at the scene, the core clues are given out to anyone with the corresponding ability, no roll required. This is an excellent way to ensure that the players are getting the information they need to make an informed decision. They function by giving the players something tangible to follow up on, like a location, an NPC, or an event. It's somewhere the players can go and investigate. If you've ever experienced your session come to a grinding halt, it could be because the players didn't have enough pointers to follow. A mystery could be composed entirely with only these nodes, but in play that looks like the players get told to go over there, then over here, now over there, oh look it's the end. Relying on only pointers gets you from start to finish, but it doesn't give any texture to the adventure.

Examples: the tavernkeep tells you that the alchemist was acting furtively; a journal entry mentions a hidden grove outside town; the militia captain says they're worried about a gang of thieves hitting the Festival of the Moon tomorrow night; a scrawled map on the back of a napkin found in the trousers of the deceased.

2. Outcome Clues

Speaking of texture, that's where these bad boys come in. Outcome clues don't point towards a place, person, or event. They don't even make sense in isolation. Instead, they provide snippets of circumstantial evidence that allow players to deduce a conclusion once they have gathered a few pieces. These are the dots that the players get to draw a line between and feel all Sherlock. When the players have made a deduction, they get a dopamine hit that keeps them engaged with the mystery at hand, and sometimes you get to hear them literally go "aha!" When multiple outcome clues are combined, they can act as a pointer. Phrased the opposite way: you can start with a pointer, then break it up into two or more outcome clues. Learning one piece of information gets the players thinking proactively about how to find the others. Finding the complementary parts might then send them off to a new scene. Conversely, the outcome might instead convey an important fact about the mystery, such as proving that someone is lying, or placing an NPC at a location at a critical time. This is just as valuable because it adds depth to your mystery by allowing your players to reinterrogate a place or person they've already investigated, only now they're armed with more knowledge. Outcome clues might be given out freely to a player who looks, or you might gate them behind good investigation or a roll depending on how crucial the conclusion is to the mystery.

Examples: an unusual boot print left at the scene + a fashionable NPC; a leaf from a rare tree stuck in an NPC's hair + a noble that is known for their garden of rare plants; an alibi from an NPC for the time of the crime + the journal entry from their friend who mentions seeing them elsewhere.

3. Foreshadowing Clues

Finally, we have the Foreshadowing clue. Technically it's just an Outcome clue with the context dialled down to zero, and a very specific conclusion: the reveal at the end of the mystery. These are the perfect garnish to spread liberally over your mystery scenario. These clues are so stripped of context that your players won't recognise them for what they are until after the big reveal happens. If the deduction from the outcome clues make them go "aha!", then a well-foreshadowed conclusion makes them go "oooh." Generating these is harder than Pointers and Outcomes. First, you have to know the reveal they pertain to, then you have to contextualise them in your game world, then you have to strip them of that context so that they players don't know what they mean. Start by taking a unique feature of the reveal, then brainstorm out how that feature might have left behind traces in each of your mystery nodes. How did it affect this place, that person, this thing? Then remove anything that could make it easily understood. The goal here is make these little things that seem out of place, but with too little information to know why. If your players glom together enough Foreshadowing clues, they might make a correct conclusion about the reveal. This is an absolutely fantastic outcome, not a failure state. If your party's reaction to the reveal isn't "oooh" but "I knew it!" then you've just had an indication that your mystery was highly engaging, with just the right amount of obfuscation to make your players feel clever for solving it.

Example: Bruce Willis never engages in dialogue with another character except for the boy who can talk to ghosts; the boy explicitly says that the ghosts don't know they're dead; the audience never sees Bruce recover from the bullet wound; Bruce only wears the clothes he died in.

Nodes

We're going to use these clues in a node-based structure. Plenty has already been written about the virtues of node-based design, so I'll give only a brief recap. Nodes are structural containers for all types of worldbuilding information. They're an abstract tool that make scenario design faults easy to recognise and rectify. A node could contain an NPC, a location, an event, an organisation, or any combination of these. Nodes can also be fractal: zoom into a node and find other nodes. Zoom out and gather together multiple nodes together into an umbrella node. They are such an incredibly versatile mental model that I use them for many different contexts in my life, from martial arts to systems engineering.

Proactive Nodes

Also called kicks, these are the ace up your sleeve for when the players start to lose momentum. Before the session comes to a halt, you introduce the proactive node to add some more spice, have a burst of action, and most crucially, drop new Pointer clues for your players to latch on to. It's your press button, mystery go brrr device.

Examples: a man with a gun bursts into the room; a new crime scene emerges; a trusted NPC is killed or abducted.

Vectors

Alright, now we've got the types of clues down, and we know we're using a node structure, all we have to do is connect them together. The last building block for this puzzle is the vector. Vectors are very simple. They are the delivery mechanisms, the vehicles, the how of giving information about the game world to your players. They're the propulsion, the clue is the payload. Typically the start point of a vector is a node, the end point is another node or conclusion, and a clue is the payload inside the box that connects those two elements together. Another way to think about vectors is that they give context to your clues.

Start Node >> Pointer >> End Node

Start Node >> Outcome >> Conclusion

Mapping out where your vectors point from and to is an easy way to discover holes in your mystery scenario design.

Floating Vectors

There is one special case of vector: the type that knows where it is going and what information is contains, but not where it comes from. This vector has a floating origin, meaning that you can assign it to anywhere that makes sense in the middle of running the game, and it can contain any of the three clue types. While these aren't strictly necessary, having a couple of these prepped ahead of time makes it seamless to react to players investigating things in ways you didn't anticipate, or as rewards for going the extra mile in a scene. You can even whip up these types of vectors in the moment, assuming you know what you want them to achieve. Sly Flourish refers to these as Secrets and Clues in his Lazy GM prep guide.

Examples: a fragment of a map with the cove entrance; a rumour about the local lord and his predilections; a loose flyer describing the parade at noon two days from now.

Putting it all Together

At last, our typology is complete. The three types of clues, the nodes, and the vectors can be combined into these three statements:

• Pointer = vector whose destination is a node

• Outcome = vector whose destination is a conclusion

• Foreshadowing = vector whose destination is the reveal

Scenario Design

For the sake of this example, we're going to take the simplest mystery scenario that provides enough depth and texture for a single 3-4 hour play session: the five node mystery. In this structure, we have one initial node that provides the hook to the players, three intermediate nodes that are where the heart of the emergent story takes place, and one finale node, where the reveal or showdown happens.

Following the standard Three Clue Rule, we need to have at least three clues originating from each of the intermediate nodes and the initial node. Looking backwards from the finale, the Inverted Three Clue says that we should have three clues pointing towards each of the intermediate nodes and the finale node.

Now, we get to zoom in and pick which types of clues we should use to make sure our mystery is robust, by which I mean, the players will always have something to do or somewhere to go to progress the story.

The initial node should contain at least three clues, which must be Pointers. The players need solid directions on where to go to start engaging in investigation work. One unambiguous clue should be pointing to each of the intermediate nodes.

The intermediate nodes should point to each other, and also to the finale. Only, we don't want our players to go from Initial >> Intermediate A >> Finale, because that shortcuts our session, wastes a bunch of prep, and feels cheap and abbreviated from the player side. So let's do something clever here and make the clues pointing to the finale be Outcome clues. That way the players need to go to at least one other intermediate node to build the puzzle that gives a pointer to the final node. If they go to both, fantastic, it reinforces their conviction. This technically breaks the redundancy of the Three Clue pointer rule, but we'll build that back in by...

Prepping a proactive node (or kick) in case the players get stuck. We'll stock it with three Pointer clues that go to the intermediate nodes (there's that redundancy), but when it interacts with the players, we'll only give out a one or two clues to send them somewhere they haven't gone yet.

Next, it's time to sprinkle some Foreshadowing into each of our nodes. All of these will point to something in the Finale. When the players do some solid investigating, or get a great result on a roll, they earn one of these. There's no hard and fast rule for the number of this type of clue.

Finally, we're gonna make two or three Floating Vectors that contain extra Outcome or Foreshadowing clues. These provide further opportunities to reward your players for buying in to the mystery with solid investigation. Having them prepped ahead of time allows you improv seamlessly in the moment.

That's it. That's all you need. This scenario is structurally sound and won't falter, is responsive to player agency, and rarely wastes prep time. Best of all, this all fits on a single page of notes.

Following on

Having a framework is all fine and dandy, but I often find a couple of worked examples help with the implementation layer. If you're made it this far and are interested in seeing some, let me know. I've got some thoughts for the following genres: police procedural, urban fantasy, noir, and classic fantasy.

Hello all

Two approaches to characters I have always been fond of are Lifepaths (as found in games like Artesia, Mythras, and Cyberpunk) and playbooks (as found in games like monster of the week, Beyond the wall.)

While I am fond of them, I also have only a small bit of experience with these systems and that lack of experience leaves me with two desires.

First, I'd love to hear which games others like that make use of one or both of these methods. I wanna see a broader range of games with lifepaths and/or playbooks.

Secondly, for those who've played or adjusted a game that manages to use both. How did that prospect go? OR how would you want such a combination handled if at all.?

I'd love to see your reccomendstions and thoughts!

So here’s my question. If an intelligent species (humanoid in DnD) were to cook and eat vanquished humanoid enemies, even if they’re not the same species, does it make the eater a cannibal since they’re both sapient?

Explanation: a player at my table is playing a fairy, and started off with skinning monsters they’d killed to sell the hides. Eventually she escalated to eating them (think Delicious in Dungeon), then progressed to skinning, cooking , and eating the goblins and hobgoblins they killed along the way.

FWIW I run a game for my teenage daughter and her teenage friends. The player in question is a really sweet girl irl and I don’t see this as any kind of red flag; I think she’s just having fun. Also her mom is usually in the next room and can hear everything and hasn’t voiced any objection.

So I’m not worried about anything in particular, whether in-game or irl; it’s just a true curiosity based question.

So between various other bundles and Free RPG day, I know have books or PDFs for over 200 unique RPG product, 90% of which I have not played or even heard of. So my question is, out of all the stuff from yesterday’s free offerings, what is the most worth trying out?

A few I recognized were Root, a Pirate Borg starter set, I got the itch.io bundle, the most of the physical offerings, and the RPG Trader bundle as well, so loads of indie games too.

Edit 1 to add context for me and my play group:

I have mostly played fantasy games (with a bit of sci fi with Star Wars 5e), I like games that have at least some connecting story components, even if it’s somewhat loose. As for story types, I would love to dip into more intrigue/mystery at some point, maybe horror as well?

I am probably going to run most of these games as one-shots first and foremost. I would be playing most of these with people I already know, maybe a couple of friends of friends.

Normally I can count on getting 4-5 friends to play via Discord and Owlbear Rodeo.