**Come here and talk about anything!**

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This post will stay stickied for (at least) the week-end. Please enjoy this space where you can talk about anything: your last game, your current project, your patreon, etc. You can even talk about video games, ask for a group, or post a survey or share a new meme you've just found. This is the place for small talk on /r/rpg.

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The off-topic rules may not apply here, but the other rules still do. This is less the Wild West and more the Mild West. Don't be a jerk.

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This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

**Come here and talk about anything!**

​

This post will stay stickied for (at least) the week-end. Please enjoy this space where you can talk about anything: your last game, your current project, your patreon, etc. You can even talk about video games, ask for a group, or post a survey or share a new meme you've just found. This is the place for small talk on /r/rpg.

​

The off-topic rules may not apply here, but the other rules still do. This is less the Wild West and more the Mild West. Don't be a jerk.

​

----------

​

This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

So I've had a realization recently that the phenomenon of designers taking the worldbuilding, characters, and events of their home campaigns or playtests and using them as a basis for the lore of their games is a wildly old trope in TTRPGs - as old as the medium itself, in fact.

Some of the first D&D settings like Mystara and Greyhawk originated this way, as did several named characters in some classic spells (like those named after Bigby, Mordenkainen, and Tasha).

And I believe many parts of early Golarion in Pathfinder had their roots in the home D&D campaign of Paizo's creative director James Jacobs, pulling from it some iconic PF elements like multiple deities or even the monster Treerazer.

A more recent example I was discussing with a friend recently is how Blades in the Dark's world, as word has it, came about from John Harper's Dungeon World campaign, and how a Fighter in his game shattered the sun and became the Immortal Emperor, setting the stage for Blades' Shattered Isles setting.

But that's just the stuff I'm aware of! What other games have done this that you know about?

Since I love reading reviews of systems by people who've actually played them, I endeavor to post my own. You can skim my past opinions here to see if my tastes align with yours.

During a lull in our ongoing campaigns, my group finally tried Brindlewood Bay. I'm an improv-y PbtA GM at heart so I was very excited to give this a whirl! I came away even more impressed than expected with the clue/theory system (which is saying something; I expected to be impressed). I also discovered to my surprise that several parts of the system did not gel with me as much as anticipated.

The good

The rulebook is nicely laid out, with a clean evolution on a recognizable Powered by the Apocalypse frame. I know that Carved by Brindlewood has become its own offshoot of PbtA, and I don't want to diminish that, but I can say that I was comfortably able to port my PbtA experience into running BB with no hassle. As a result, I was able to skim over plenty of the rules.

A notable standout for me was the Session One walkthrough, which takes you through everything you should do during a first session. There are time estimates so you know how long each portion should take, and even read-aloud bits so you don't have to equivocate. Even for our group of experienced players, this was a really helpful guideline to make sure we didn't miss anything as we jumped into our first session.

The great

I really loved the way clues and theories worked. If you're not familiar: the players have two moves, "Avoid risk" and "Find a clue." Clues are evocative snippets pulled from the mystery at hand and they come without context. Their true meaning is intentionally ambiguous at first. However, players can at any time choose to propose a solution to the mystery, and they then roll with a bonus for each clue that they incorporate into their theory.

This played great for me! I already think of GM prep as "Prepare breadcrumbs / link them on the fly"; it's the whole organizational scheme behind Atma, the card-based RPG-in-a-box that my brother and I made. What BB added to the mix was the idea that "Link them" became a delayed, player-initiated action. We never had to pause the action to fit a clue into our mental model; we just jotted it down. And the moment when the players theorized usually included at least one "Aha!..." moment as someone cleverly linked a difficult clue into their solution. I think this moment of "Ah, that's how it could fit" equated well with the epiphany moment you get as you watch the detective explain the solution in mystery fiction.

The less good

Here are the things that didn't work as well for us.

Playing as elderly women: I thought this would be a great premise, as it's so evocative and fun. But it slowed us down a bit in play. The PCs weren't authority figures, so people weren't bringing problems to them. And the PCs weren't action heroes, so chasing danger felt a bit iffy. I think it led to a more observational stable of characters than we expected. One player mentioned that he struggled to come up with appropriate actions until he started thinking of his character more like a diabolical mastermind and less like a grandma.

The rigidity of clues: As much as I loved the clue system, I got tripped up a few times. We often wanted to treat some evocative detail as a clue, even when it wasn't the direct payoff of the Meddling Move. And sometimes, rolling a 7-9 on clue discovery (especially early in the mystery, before things escalate) led to a pause as we tried to think what on earth could be complicated about it.

The mystery seeds: Again, I really like improvising off a set of sparse breadcrumbs. But across two mysteries (Dad Overboard, Jingle Bell Shock) I found myself filling in way more gaps then expected to make sure we had enough locations, enough bystanders, enough details to explore within those locations... I'm not sure why this surprised me, but it did. Also, in Jingle Bell Shock, the players essentially start in a foyer with all the suspects. It was way too much info for the players to absorb at once; it took another few scenes with them split up and talking to individual suspects before they started to separate the characters (by role, not by name).

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Overall, I really liked the system and really liked its innovations in improvising a mystery. I don't think the actual experience of play was as good for our group as Monster of the Week or Blades in the Dark, but I do expect to apply some of the lessons and mechanics from BB into other systems going forward.

I have been running my own campaign for about 5 months now, I am a new female DM but I have spent DAYS researching on how to be the best DM possible and how to make my players have a good time. I currently have a party of 6 players, 4 male 2 female, and they are all older than me by 4-8 years. Every single session, at least 1 to 3 people show up late, like half an hour to 45 minutes late. Yesterday 3 people showed up 45 minutes to an hour late. I have already set the precedent that those who show up on time get inspiration for that session. I have a roommate, who is in my campaign, that also DMs a game that I am in as well. Almost all of the players in my campaign are in his, and they do show up late, but not nearly as often (maybe 1/2 players 10 minutes late every week). I’m starting to feel like it’s because my players don’t respect me and my campaign? Is it because I am a woman or a first time DM? All of my players express how much they love my creativity and I put so much time into making the experience individualized for each player so no one is ever bored. Help!!

I just love listening to TTRPG content and my current streaming platform of choice is YouTube. What are some of your favorite TTRPG content creators that don't get enough traffic or might be lesser known?

The medium can be anything: Youtube, podcasts, blogs. I'm focusing primarily on YouTube but would love to hear who you've found particularly inspiring.

Ideally someone with a small-ish following (<10k subscribers/followers, perhaps as a metric for "small"?). I love finding little diamonds in the rough.

Here's five:

1. Role on Buddy with Uriah - Extremely polished production, positive vibes, and a great introduction to techniques that really help out my player. His most recent videos talking about subjects like "high trust tables", "roleplaying for introverts" and "fast prep" are absolute gold mines of wisdom! Seems like a great dude.
2. The Tomb of Lime Gaming - Again, Matt has some phenomenal ideas on how to approach roleplaying as an exercise/skill. His discussion on horror gaming, pacing, and other themes are really extremely high quality. I especially like his video "How to achieve immersion in a Table-Top RPG" (you'll notice it by a giant label "MUSHROOMS" on the thumbnail).
3. Table Top Empire - Focused mostly on Fantasy Flight/Edge Studios Star Wars RPG, he does provide awesome breakdowns on the system, skills, and great "intro" content that could be easily cross pollinate. The guy is so passionate about Star Wars and he's truly helpful as a GM
4. Runeslinger - An older choice but a great one. Very long form content. Also provided a lot of GM guidance for FFG's Star Wars years ago. However, his roleplaying live plays are a blast for me to listen to. I really appreciate his in depth discussions with other folks in the hobby.
5. Tablerunner Crispy - Maybe a little bit of a controversial pick as he's certainly dogmatic about his style of roleplaying (with a heavy focus on immersion). However, you can't fault the guy for wanting to improve the experience of people at the hobby. Once you can accept that maybe there is a "better" way to roleplay (a controversial idea in and of itself but somewhat rational if you think about it), his ideas on ways to improve time at the table make a whole lot of sense. I don't agree with every single one of his dictums, but I do find a lot of his advice helpful. His review of "professional" games has really reinforced my own confidence that high quality gaming is really accessible to everyone. His live plays also serve as a great resume.

Love to hear what others in the community are listening to!

Edit: THANK YOU! What outstanding recommendations! Half of these I've never heard of which is the entire purpose of this thread. Isn't our hobby awesome?

I am looking for something that:

• Has gadgets
• Not a PBTA system
• Preferably on the newer and more well known side, but that is not that important
• Kinda like a James bond type deal
• Medium Crunch
• Does not include supernatural or heavy war themes.

I mean it does not have to fit perfectly. Also if it not black and white and has art and pictures instead of just being words and charts would be nice.

Update: Winners list so far

• The Spy Game
• White Lies

Is a known fact that many Wild West movies are re-tellings of Samurai movies from Japan, plus there is a lot of thematic similarities between lone drifters from the West and wandering ronin from the East.

In truth, I've never been that much into cowboys and I'm long gone from my strong weeb era, but I love RPGs and the idea of combining Samurais & Cowboys in a cohesive way seems like PERFECT material to work with.

If there isn't such a game, what are some where I can find stuff like:

• Setting rules to combine Edo to Meiji Japan & The Wild West USA
• Rules for Firearms
• Rules for Melee Weapons
• Rules for Horseback riding
• Rules for Trains & Wagons
• If I go for a Weird West/Wild Wild West approach, Bestiary for Outlaws, Yokai and Aliens

I know Household has the Regency Era style, but I was wondering if there are some other more grounded RPGs out there that fit that style

Hello folks, me and my friends play a RPG called Tormenta.

In this world there are many gods, and one of them is called That is, god of resurrection and prophecy.

His clerics have the divine power of ressurrect one person per month.

I've always wondered: what are the implications in a world that your loved ones can be brought back to life?

I mean, the Thyatis' church must be crowded with people begging to have their loved ones resurrected.

I can imagine numerous pilgrimage, people in queues stretching for kilometers and kilometers.

I think that the authors of Tormenta didn't think thoroughly about the consequences of having an entire church capable of ressurrect people.

Am o hallucinating or this makes sense? I can only imagine the poor clerics being harassed by people only by carrying the Thyatis symbol.

What you guys think? This makes sense?

Hello!

In my journey to become a better GM, I'm looking to expand my horizons beyond 5e and Starfinder. (Main games my party's been playing)

So far we've tried Vagabond and ICRPG. They liked Vagabond, and while ICRPG worked well for the oneshot we tested it with, I worry it wouldn't be enough for a longer campaign. I (with a different party) have played OSE, and I'd rather pick something else. In addition, I'm looking at Worlds Without Number, and Macchiato Monsters.

Personally, I prefer a bit of crunch, but I imagine most of my players would prefer something a bit simpler.

Hi! Im looking for system/game recommendations. I am a relatively new DM who is hoping to run a game for my friends and I. It will be like 4-5 people and hopefully a short campaign under 20 sessions. I would love to home-brew ideas and content, but I am getting a little lost in the vast variety of systems. Ideally, I would adapt from a system rather than make everything from scratch. Maybe pull classes, items, monsters, but use my own lore.

Theme and inspirations

- Fantasy/horror

- I like darker themes with fantasy elements.

Big fan of the themes and atmosphere of Elden ring but not sure if/how I can capture that.

- Lore/aesthetic, theme, inspirations (all over the map but)

- Elden Ring, Gideon the Ninth, Constatine, Darkest Dungeon

- I want my players to feel like they are battling for their lives and also for the soul of the world, pinpoints of light surrounded by darkness (I know this is more of a storytelling thing than a systems based thing but I want a system that supports that feeling)

What I am looking for/like

- Lighter systems. I watch Dimension 20 and I like their home-brewed Kids on Bikes stuff but wouldn’t really want to make up entire classes, also there needs to also be enough of a system that less improv/role play skilled ppl can still have something to focus on

- Interesting outcomes to skill checks

- I was looking at Candela obscura and was intrigued by concept of mixed successes and shifting proficiencies when damage is taken rather than flat out negatives. It didn’t seem like it had good reviews and doesn’t have enough combat for me.

- Combat that is engaging but can go fast and not take multiple sessions

- Not really sure if I want it HP based or more narrative focused, but I want to reward both swinging a sword and thinking things through.

- Unique classes

- Chaos

What I do not want

- Complex rules where people have to have super in depth understanding of mechanics to have a good time (there will be some newer to rpg ppl at the table)

- Call of Cuthulu seems too investigative focused for me, but Ive also never played it so

Also any advice on picking a system more generally? Im getting fatigued scrolling through 200 page pdfs to figure out that a system isn’t really what I am looking for. Also getting really lost in the sauce with so many subgenres and systems like Candella Obscura being inspired by Forged in the Dark which is based on Blades in the Dark?? or the difference between Call of Cuthulu and Call of Cuthulu: Dark ages? Any recs or advice would be helpful this is starting to feel daunting and I haven't even started