**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.

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

I don't know if I'm a minority opinion on this, but there are so many great ambient setting sounds that I can't use because it will also include musical elements that don't match the vibe of the scene I'm setting. This particular blacksmith/hospital/church doesn't need to be haunted, thanks! I need the SFX, and I might need the music, but I need to be able to choose! At least give us the different, clean versions.

OR there's no music, and the ambient sounds are perfect... but then suddenly they will add VERY SPECIFIC, DIAGETIC sounds. Why did you suddenly put footsteps here?? Why did you make the sound of the door opening?? My players are going to ask who that is! No track that is 10 minutes long should include a loud individual person doing something at the two minute mark, unless you are making a cassette tape to be played for trick or treaters visiting your porch in 1995.

Please and thank you. Kevin MacLeod: you're cool.

91 minute review. We are eating well today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH5-uQj4uOA

Is it how they handle a type of interaction? The way character advancement works? Or the prep time for setup?

Long shot, but this might be the only community where someone remembers.

Around 1991, on a Wizardry-fan bulletin board, a GM posted: "If you're a Wizardry fan and want to talk back and forth to an actual GM, send a message to this box."

The game was called Fantasia, later renamed BlewYonder Knights. D&D-flavored, six classes, three GMs running it together — Brian, Anne, and Scott. Free to play. Ran for ten years and closed in November 2001.

I've digitized the surviving archive (154 files, oldest dated December 1991) and built a tribute site: https://blewyonderknights.com

If "Atlantis," "Tanglewood," "Blewyonder," or the phrase MOVE....rings any bells, I'd love to hear from you. The contact form on the site comes straight to me.

Thanks for reading.

“Elric returns to the tabletop in an officially licensed RPG powered by the award-winning Dragonbane system

Hello!

Today, we are thrilled to announce Legends of Stormbringer, a new officially licensed tabletop roleplaying game based on the iconic fantasy works of Michael Moorcock, planned for release in 2027.

Legends of Stormbringer will carry you into the Young Kingdoms – a world of dying empires, warring gods, and doomed heroes – and bring Moorcock’s richly imagined setting to the tabletop using rules mechanics based on our award-winning Dragonbane RPG. The game will feature the same accessible, dynamic, and deadly approach that has made Dragonbane one of our most celebrated titles.

Returning to the Young Kingdoms as setting writer is Richard Watts, whose work on previous Stormbringer RPGs helped define how generations of roleplayers have experienced Moorcock’s world.

“This has been in the works for several months and we’re thrilled to finally share the news,” said Tomas Härenstam, CEO of Free League Publishing. “We are honored to bring Elric and the Young Kingdoms to the tabletop once more.”

Further details – including crowdfunding plans and additional creative team announcements – will be revealed at a later date. “

https://mailchi.mp/frialigan/legends-of-stormbringer-rpg-dragonbane-announced-news?e=da5d961137

Some years ago I was looking for podcasts and shows where they would address other tabletop roleplaying games (ttrpg) beyond Dungeons & Dragons (DnD). I know there are plenty of options but many do not align at all with the perspective I have on rpgs, or we differ in theme interest.

But a thing that stuck with me was a podcast episode where the person reviewing it talked about World/Chronicles of Darkness (WoD) and said something in the likes of: "The game seems interesting but I will put it low on my ranking because you need a different book for each class/race you want to play, like if you want to be a vampire, or a werewolf, or a mage..."

The take was such a miss that it made me physically facepalm. But it brought to the surface a type of problem that people might miss when discussing diverting from DnD to other ttrpgs, which it's the rigid mindset that DnD culture has created. Of course this is a fringe case and what I am laying out might be obvious to many, but I thought I'd put it here cos I have not seen it discussed from this perspective.

Less obvious examples include the notion of what people consider difficulty and the determination of where excitement comes from. For DnD, it seems like conflict and progress both emerge from violence and the risk of death, which makes it so that people unconciously looks for life-risking tropes in the game when trying to interpret the story premise a narrator puts forward. It makes it also hard to treat those moments of physical conflict in any way other than "goal is beat opponent", closing the walls around any other possible outcome of an altercation that has a physical component to it. This culture of narrator challenging players and threatening their character's lives is, I believe, one of the aspects that might contribute to isolating the narrator from the players, and ends up creating an unspoken rivalry between them as seen in shows like Dimension20, where the point is to "ruin some master plan" that the narrator might have, cheating the challenge, "winning" the game, outsmarting the other player (in my opinion, the narrator is a player too).

Another one is the case of applying videogame's materialistic, individualistic mindset to any story as the logical one. This include the culture of looting, raiding, individual increase of wealth, or the idea of calling characters heroes for performing feats (violent or not) that do not involve selfless risks and sacrifice. You might say "but players put themselves at risk of death constantly" but this form of risk emanates from the hustle attitude that is more akin to gambling than heroism. This even makes it so that literary tools and tropes like "a dragon hoard" become a wealth-earning prospect more than the the fable-filled notion of greed that the stories that inspired the tropes sometimes might have meant to convey. These specific aspect (which might actually be many merged into one) also might contribute to the "narrator is the simulator and emulator of the game" expectation, making players reactive espectators of a show put up for them that is even smaller of a role than what an actor would actually have on an improvised show.

Things like loot, combat, and character development follow the videogame recipe and can become the predetermined mindset for all ttrpgs, which might contribute to the difficulty of many on seeing the appeal of non-DnD ttrpgs. Players expect their skills to grow instead of declining with age or staying the same, they expect that every item put in their way is a gift to them to acquire to increase in power, and the expectation that every game is meant to tell a rags-to-riches story of personal capital growth and power.

Just to clarify again, I am not saying it should not be this way or that this is bad. These are fun aspects that have all the right to be present in any ttrpg, DnD or not. I am just trying to develop an idea about other forms of struggles that people might face when jumping from DnD to other ttrpgs that can contribute to a narrower understanding of them, while also limiting the way people can play ttrpgs, that are all about the complete freedom of creating a story and navigating it.

There was a poll a while ago that asked "ttrpg Game Masters" questions about how they organise encounters, how they challenge players, if they sandbox or railroad, etc. But none of these apply that well if you look at a game like the Witch is Dead or Everyone is John. And also shows how this mindset serves as a wall that limits the space in which ttrpgs can be played.

It seems to me, that this mindset puts characters as the players' pets, and the game as "taking your pet out for a walk", where they are brushed, dressed, given treats, taught tricks, pee on constructions, and let out to chase local wildlife. The narrator is there to make sure they do all that.

I think I had other ideas but right now cannot remember them. I would love to read some of the many things I have missed that form inherent part of DnD culture and mindset, that also can become a culture clash when learning other games. Again, I am not against any of it, just stating that these very fun aspects of DnD can be detrimental to imagining ttrpg outside this space, and that addressing them directly or with awareness might make the jump easier.

TLDR: DnD has a bunch of invisible rules and expectations that also make the culture around it harder to open a different approach to stories an ttrpgs when making a leap to other games. What are some you have found and what are your ways to un-learn them?

I was wondering if there were games out there that felt like every player was playing almost a different game in terms of how fundamentally different their characters each were?

I’m not talking like basic classes in an RPG, moreso like playing a cross splat game with the oWoD system, with how different they all are both flavorfully and mechanically.

Not affiliated with Arc Dream but Shane Ivey posted a new ebook bundle for a lot of the Delta Green line. It gets suggested here frequently and they're offering like 30+ titles for 15 USD which is an excellent deal.

Standouts include Impossible Landscapes, Static Protocol which is like... an index of clues/information for IL, and it's digital art assets for in-game handouts, God's Teeth & digital assets and the 4 scenario mid-campaign book God's Hunt (broken into individual scenarios) along with the core books and some classics like Convergence and Puppet Shows & Shadow Plays.

Lot of good stuff here. Not as crazy as the "here's literally everything in DG" sale they did a year or two ago but still an excellent starting point at an aggressively good prive.

What is the closest you've gotten to a finished campaign? What was the worst way one ended?

i love all the tropes of lovecraft but want new ideas. call of cthulus system is very arcane as well which is a downside.

Looking for game recs that let my players be a band of thieves/criminals. The only two I know of are Blades in the Dark, and Dusk City Outlaws, both are good, just want MORE. Thanks!