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https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.7100392

Nice to see.
(Also nice that the article's headline didn't call it "Dungeons and Dragons" by default).

I do GM work with my city's community centers and libraries. It seems to be growing here too. They choose to run D&D because of name recognition but I've convinced the library to let me run a Dragonbane game starting in the spring. Hoping it'll open it up a bit more to other games.
It's nice to see these types of games outside of the gaming stores too. I have so many players who love to play but would have never thought to step into a LCS to find a game. Having it as part of community programing opens it up to a lot of new people.

Anyone else have these types of things in their community?

Just started a new campaign, and one of my players has created a character she deems to be very odd, but in a charming way. At the first encounter, she told the bartender their aura looks like vomit and then scared another patron at the bar by running at her full speed and then saying something weird to her. Both my NPCs reacted badly, and were not keen to talk to the PCs because of these weird interactions. My player then reminded me that while her character is weird, people are supposed to find the weirdness charming.

This is where I’m struggling. We are playing MoTW set in present time, in a small dusty town in Arizona, where there are generally not a lot of outsiders. The players just got to town, barged into the local pub, and started accosting the bartender and clientele. I played the NPCs how i believe any normal person would react, but I’m wondering if I played them TOO normal? Should I just assume my player’s off-putting character is charming to NPCs even if I don’t think she is, or should she actually be a little more charming? Struggling with this balance. I haven’t GMed much and would like your advice!!

edit: Thank you all for your advice!! It’s so insightful. I’ll definitely have another conversation with the players about the vibe of the game (Supernatural, X-files, Buffy the vampire slayer vibe) and that the world is supposed to feel real and NPCs will act accordingly. And even though i personally don’t find the things the PC says charming, I’m sure somebody would, so I’ll make a concerted effort to have some weirdo NPCs like it (lol). Finding the balance as a GM is so hard!!! Hopefully it goes better next session as I’m learning a lot myself.

hello.

I'm using modern loosely, just a game that could be (or is) set in the later 20th century to the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s.

I don't mind which horror genre but I'll prefer a game that can be played for 6+ sessions.

but tbh I just want to see cool and under noticed horror ttrpgs

Hi, I was interested in exploring more TTRPG games outside DnD. I’m interested in games where no game master is required, and it could be easy to pick up and play in one evening with friends! I thought it might be fun to do something like a monthly “book club” but my friends and I try a game.

I’d love to explore popular games and also any indie/smaller publishers! Any recs? Thanks

I'm really stuck and can't talk about it with my future players, please lend me a hand!

I'm writing a sandbox campaign where my players will be free to explore a region with the ultimate goal of slaying the dragon living in the local castle. I'm taking inspiration from the adventure Dragon Mountain.

Some plot points I'd like to keep:
- The dragon is central to the plot, and the fact that it is a dragon must be important.
- The dragon rules over minions in a castle.
- There is a curse called Dragon Fever around the castle that makes people angry and paranoïd, and sometimes berserk.

As I was making progress, I'm now stuck between two storylines:

Option A) the dragon really is the BBEG. It is the source of everything wrong (the minions and the curse), and slaying it will resolve many things.

Option B) the dragon is secretly not the BBEG. Amongst the treasures the dragon is hoarding, there is a sentient evil cauldron. The cauldron is the source of the curse, and is has powers like raising the dead and spewing lava. The dragon may not know it, but it is also under the cauldron's influence. the cauldron is similar to the One Ring in the way it corrupts people. In addition, the cauldron could be the reason the castle's original occupants are dead, killing each other because of the curse.

I kinda like having a cauldron as BBEG, and it adds to the mystery, but it's starting to feel a bit heavy storywise. On the other hand, having just a dragon and its minions by themselves feels a bit light... What do you think?

Thank you for your time :)

+++ As a bonus question, I'm wondering how to stop my players from rushing in to face the dragon immediatly. +++

I've spent the better part of the last year obsessed with finding a "perfect" workflow for my games. I went through and tried 15 different apps and sites just trying to find stuff that actually helped me with DMing.

Most of them didn't make the cut (mostly either too clunky, took too long to set up or there were better alternatives). There are now 5 that I actually use every week, these are the tools I currently use for all my sessions:

1. Notion (World builder): This is my favourite world building tool. I know everyone raves about Obsidian and I did try to make it work, but I eventually came back to Notion. TBH obsidian felt a bit overwhelming with so many plugins and template tinkering. I found Notion a lot more straightforward and the database structure just clicks better for me. Being able to link an NPC to a specific shop and then to a quest line in a clean table just works incredibly well.
2. Saga20 (Campaign tracker): This is easily the biggest game changer for my table’s pacing. It transcribes our sessions and handles all the recaps and notes. No one has to take manual notes anymore, so we don't have to pause and wait for players to finish scribbling (which IMO kills the pacing). It also lets players jump in and check the recaps between sessions to stay caught up since many of my sessions are missing at least one player. I also just take those summaries and use them to seed my Notion lore so everything stays consistent without me having to write up my own session recaps.
3. Syrinscape (Music): I used to use spotify or just random youtube loops but the immersion here is MUCH better. It lets me layer environmental sounds like a crowded tavern or a rainy forest directly over the music. Being able to trigger a dragon roar or a fireball sound effect with easily adds a ton to the vibe without me having to juggle different browser tabs or search for "fireball" sounds mid combat. I also tried pocketbard which is pretty good but I prefer using an app on my laptop rather than having to use my phone.
4. Lost Atlas (Maps): This has saved me the most time for my session prep, I honestly haven't drawn a custom battlemap in months. This is basically a massive search engine for maps. I used to spend hours on Inkarnate or Dungeondraft, but now I just type in a theme like "Sewers" or "Dungeon" and I’ll find exactly what I need in seconds. It always has a map that just works for whatever scene/situation my players are in.
5. Shieldmaiden (Combat encouters): This is what I use to run the actual fights. It’s lightweight enough that it doesn't clutter my screen, but it tracks everything I need. The autobalancing feature is huge for me. If I realize mid session that an encounter is turning into a total TPK or is too easy, I can tweak it live and also enjoy not having to do much math :D.

I’m always looking for new tools to try so if you’ve got a tool you swear by pls drop a comment. Also happy to answer questions if you're curious about how I’m actually using these or why the other tools I tried didn't make the cut

Thoughts?

The creator of Beacon (a final fantasy Lancer-like game I love) just launched the KS for their next game. Photon System Overdrive is a sci-fi, gm-less, roguelike TTRPG for 1-2 players inspired by Phantasy Star Online.

I'm totally unaffiliated with the game and creator, but like their previous work enough that I wanted to give it a shoutout.

It seems incredibly common for people to have scheduling issues in our hobby, though I feel like an exception to the rule. I've been in many games with a group of friends through the years, and we always manage to make it to sessions despite work, family obligations, and school. For me, weekly sessions were the norm, and cancellations due to low attendance were extremely rare.

However, recently I hosted a D&D campaign for some newer friends of mine and we found it difficult to schedule things. I racked my brain a bit as to why and I feel like it came down to how they engaged with the hobby compared to my other friend groups.

See, my friend group that I mainly play with are a bunch of GURPS players. We all love to GM and play, and we all play in each others games when we get around to hosting one. We show up for each other, take interest in each other's worlds, and try to make interesting characters. For us, it's kind of a big part of our lives, having played on-and-off together for nearly 10 years.

For my new D&D players, it seems like they didn't take the hobby as seriously. Not that there's anything wrong with that! It was just incredibly hard for them to find time for a regular bi-weekly session, so we tried to schedule after each session. But that turned into a problem of things popping up on those days we agreed on so I adopted a strict "be there or don't, we're running."

My philosophy when I schedule time for anything is that I treat it like a serious obligation. Of course, important things will conflict sometimes, but if I schedule RPG night with some friends, that time is set and I stick to it. I felt like my D&D group was more prone to schedule things they really wanted to do instead of play an RPG, so attendance was low.

My conclusion to this is that it feels like scheduling is not really an issue for people who are truly invested in the hobby. That someone who really wants to play will make the time, despite how busy their day-to-day is.

What are everyone's thoughts?

So I have been trying to get into Lancer games for a good while now. The games I do get in don’t usually pan out because of the following reasons.

The players, from what I have interacted with and seen on the countless recruitment posts, are majority combat coded. They are so focused on their builds and the combat that they can’t really add anything to the conversation outside of combat. But they definitely have hundreds of things to say about what other players should do on their turn. I have also noticed that games with lots of GM work put into them, with lore, NPCs, details, and so on, get flooded with these players. But they don’t touch the type of games where what they prefer to do, war game minis with minimal lore prep and PC interaction, is the expectation.

I have seen games die on session 1 because the table is so quiet. The attitude for anything out of mech is “whatever, let’s get this over as fast as possible so we get to mech combat.” That leaves any player or players to dominate the conversation or awkwardly interact with the GM one on one while the rest of the table just listens.

So anyone got other systems to recommend with hopefully a better community as well?

Didn't see this posted yet on the subreddit, thought I would help spread some awareness to those who might be interested! I am not affiliated with the project other than being a backer.

The summary per the official Backerkit page: Run a magical Café, protect the world's magic, and tell a story... one Latte and a couple of D6s at a time! Pumpkin Spice is a magical, cozy RPG illustrated by SimzArt, inspired by Kiki’s Delivery Service, Legends & Lattes, Coffee Talk, and more.

Link: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/acheron-games/pumpkin-spice-a-magically-cozy-rpg

I personally love the art direction and overall aesthetic they're going for on this project, and I'm not familiar with too many modern urban fantasy type projects like this.

Skimming the quickstart, the Guide (this game's version of GM/DM) also has a character that they play alongside their players'.

Characters can be different types of Witches.

Actions are resolved using symbol-based d6s. The Guide will determine what symbols are needed for a particular action, players try to roll those symbols. There is a guide on using normal d6 numbers instead of symbols.

Heavy on the slice-of-life stuff. It seems the typical session might be a Day, or series of Days, within your group's cafe. Each Day can have multiple Moments which act as scenes, usually ending with some sort of dice roll that players either accomplish individually or as a group.

Overall it seems like a pretty simple but unique system, though I'm not sure how fit of a system it would be for campaign-level play.

Hope to see some more Witches join if they haven't already!