Hi all,

I'm Gareth Hanrahan, author of a whole bunch of stuff (1/2 of Dracula Dossier, Eyes of the Stone Thief, Pirates of Drinax, Darkening of Mirkwood, Hands of the White Wizard, Dagger in the Heart).

Crowdfunding soon is MERRYSHIRE DETECTIVE CLUB, a GUMSHOE-powered game of Halfling Detectives solving murders in a cosy little village.

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/pelgrane-press/merryshire-detective-club/launch_party?ref=GRHAMA

Anyway, as the title says, Ask Me Anything.

**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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The Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland has inscribed new entries to the National Inventory of Living Heritage; one among them, role-playing culture in Finland. Here’s the inventory entry: https://wiki.aineetonkulttuuriperinto.fi/wiki/Role-playing_culture .

The national inventory is mandated by UNESCO for all signatories of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The point of the convention is to increase the visibility of living heritage and awareness of its importance, and to help ensure its continued transmission. Finnish Government’s article about the new inscriptions: https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-/1410845/national-inventory-of-living-heritage-expands-with-22-new-elements .

Finland has one of the most extensive such inventories in Europe, perhaps due to the bottom-up, wiki-based, community-led process. Finnish Heritage Agency article about the 22 new entries: https://www.museovirasto.fi/en/articles/22-new-entries-added-to-finlands-national-inventory-of-living-heritage .

Disclosure: I was one of the people who helped write the application. I run a small Finnish TTRPG studio.

Everyone knows Waterdeep, Minas Tirith and Ankh-Morpork.

Which real historical city do you think would make an amazing RPG setting?

And I guess that begs the additional question, what does amazing mean to you in this context?

I am a cheapskate and didn’t want to pay for the physical copy of the RPG Im running right now (exit: I did pay for the PDF! Don’t pirate RPGs). Instead I printed out a copy at work, punched it with a hole punch, and stuck it in a binder. But what started as a way to save a couple bucks until I could save up money ended up actually being waaay more convenient than having a book ever was:

For one, I can write all over the damn thing. This is really nice for adventures where I want to change stuff- I can just make notes directly in the text instead of having to cross-reference with my notes. But it’s also nice for tracking changes to the world. Players killed Bob the shopkeeper in Dwarf town? Just cross him out on the page.

Second, I can freely re-order pages and insert stuff where I want it. If I print out a monster online I can just put it in the middle of the monster manual in alphabetical order, making it easy to find. If I have a replacement for one of the hexes in my hex crawl I just put the new hex directly in the middle where it goes. If I have an home brew race I just print it out and stick it next to the other races Z Amazing!

Third, It makes the game way more accessible for my players. Previously we either had a rulebook we had to pass around when someone needed to check how a class ability worked, or people needed to have their phones on them. Now? I just print out a copy of everyone’s class snd race and give it to them. They have exactly the information they need right in front of them the whole time we play, which is great for new players. If two players have the same race or class they can sit next to each other and share, like in school.

Fourth, I find carrying around binders overfilled with paper sticking out everywhere just has a DIY, retro punk sort of aesthetic to it. Maybe not everyone’s cup of tea but I like it.

I've only got a handful of Zines and they're kind of all over the place. Some are adventure modules for a larger game, some are self-contained RPGs.

I kind of love their format, but I'm curious: what's a good zine made of? What Zines should I check out?

I can't speak to everywhere, but my LGS does "Free RPG Day item with RPG purchase", so I guess I'm asking "what FRPGD content are you hoping to pick up?" as well as "what games will you be buying?" (If that's relevant to your store)

I've owned (and loved) the Wanderhome PDF for years; thinking about finally scoring the hardcover. I'm also just starting my first Shadowdark campaign and really loving that, so I might be looking for some OSR supplements as available.

What about y'all?

So hey folks, I'm running a summer smorgasbord of oneshots of different systems for my players to pick our next big campaign.

One that caught my eye is stonetop, BUT i'm pretty sure it doesn't have quickstart rules or anything like that;

So if not stonetop itself is there are system like it (I know it's vaguely Pbta) that I can use to kind of show off how the game would be? Or am I better off just buying the full game and then making a oneshot myself?

We decided to test cyberpunk red before starting a two year campaign in it, and though the sessions were fun the mechanics were not to our liking. I suggested we do this because normally we play light to medium crunch games. BRP is the favourite game of many in the group. I was a player in this game, so this all assumes we played it correctly and the GM was running the game rules as written.

What I found very interesting was how much the game minimized randomness. It’s a single d10 system and some rolls were at around a +13. I think this is cool because it really forces you to specialize and spotlights characters well. If this was a play test for a new game I would have suggested turning it into a single d6 game and squishing the math a bit. It’s a bit much, and with the new way you’d get the same good aspects with less of the negatives.

The flavour of the cyberware is fun and I think it gives the game a lot of style and that is a key component of cyberpunk IMO. If we pick a different game I think we’ll still use the books to grab some cool stuff.

Exploding dice are very cool, but negative exploding dice are not. I get why they did it, but I think it was super clunky.

I’ve always heard of the netrunner issue where everyone is playing the game, and then the netrunner goes into the system and plays their own game. I played the netrunner and I felt kind of bad that the spotlight was on me for so long when I’m already a very roleplay heavy player. If you’re going to put someone in the role of the netrunner I suggest picking the wallflower player or someone who is hesitant to grab the spotlight. I could see this being a great tool for spotlight management that not a lot of games have. I might have been playing the class very poorly but netrunning felt more dangerous than being in a gunfight.

I really don’t like the armour system. I get wanting armour to slowly degrade, but the way they do it is tracking intensive.

Our group is usually fine with high amounts of skills, but this list felt pretty excessive.

We are thinking we are going to switch to something else for the main campaign.

Back during COVID I ran a Chronicles of Darkness West Marches game, under the premise of taking odd-jobs within a city.

I was originally planning a Warhammer 40k West marches but didn't have much interest from friends. The idea being that players can have multiple characters in different Factions dealing with a sector of space I generated from Stars without Number. Plus a Space Hulk for dungeon crawling.

Another one I had was Fallout 2d20. With the idea of taking Fallout 4's settlement mechanic and doing a bit of post Fallout 4 exploration in the Commonwealth.

Any other games you feel work surprisingly well in West Marches?

I'm looking for a game that allows players to build classic movie monster type characters like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Wolfman, etc. I was thinking Monsterhearts at first but alas it doesn't have as many options as I'd like for those classic movie monsters.

It's been a while, but after getting to play some Lancer games, the itch to GM the system is returning. Unfortunately, my last forays into doing so produced games that died because the players just didn't talk to each other. They would use Pilot Skill Triggers to avoid any dialogue and as a shortcut to obtain whatever they needed. They would tell me, "I got the thing Player X needs. What next?" instead of having a moment to talk to their fellow player.

That type of occurrence was the pattern no matter the context or result of their actions. The only time conversations happened, either in first person or third person, was when I was an NPC. That got draining really quickly.

This happened across three Lancer games. There was one player among the 12 who tried, but after the first session they understandably left because the vibes weren't there.

When screening players, I talked to these folks, and they all said, "Yeah, I would love to RP." But if you know the state of the Lancer community, players are desperate for games and would consider joining games that completely wreck their sleep schedules just for a chance to play. So lying is not above them.

I take their words at face value and see how it actually unfolds in play.

So I ask for aid from the wider community on how I can alleviate these RP issues through in-game aids.