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I'm gonna be brief, I never wanted to use the new Reddit interface and always stuck to Old Reddit. Recently, it has been decided that logging in would be mandatory to use old reddit, another step further to try and smother it, to force people to go to the new shittier and more ad friendly interface. The days of old reddit are numbered, and one day they will pull the plug for good. If I can't use Old Reddit, then I will not use Reddit at all, which means I need a new place on the web to discuss RPGs.

Where are the other big RPG communities on the internet? Some friends of mine have suggested Discord, but I always felt that it was better for casual chat than long and in depth conversations, and debates. Also I vetoed places such as RPG NET because of their adversarial, and downright user hostile approach of moderation.

This post may mean trouble for my account, so if you have an interesting answer, give it quick.

A design focused post on how Attack Rolls present themselves throughout the industry. I didn't cover dice pools though, because I have absolutely no experience with those systems.

I recently bought the Vampire the Masquerade 2nd Edition core rule book and I’m wondering what other books I could collect to add to the game. I’d like more detailed Sabbat npcs, werewolves and hunters to add as npcs. Along with anything else that seems cool and works with 2nd edition.
Any recommendations? Thank you!

Edit: holy hell, I didn't expect SO many suggestions, you guys are the best, thank you so much!

I started playing d&d from 3.5 and also played enough of 5e. It has a lot of cool stuff, but also a lot of stuff that I hate. It's difficult to check new systems and judge them without actually playing a little and there are a lot of them... I'm sorry for a lot of words here, but if you have some time can you guys recommend a good system based on my specific nitpicks?

1. I hate that a lot of stuff is there just because it was always there, not because its good game design. Like fireball is intentionally OP because its iconic and sort of a "brand" and taking any alternative feels bad. Spell slot system just feels outdated and too cumbersome for new players. I want the system to be built with good game design in mind, not "we have to save 50 year old legacy" bullshit.
2. Whole system build around resurrection being a common tool. Death is not dramatic, its just a resource. Also because of that i have to come up with bullshit reasons why specific important npc or backstory character cannot just be brought back. Or why nobles aren't just reviving everyone important for them every day. Death should be important and dramatic narrative moment and permanent. And i can't just homerule "there is no resurrection magic" because the whole system is built with resurrection as resource in mind and I would have to rebalance all of it basically making my own system.
3. Opportunity attacks kill all dynamics in combat when dynamics is already one of the weakest parts of ttrpg. Its a stupid mechanic that leads to "come close, do not move, roll dice until one of you is dead" the optimal tactic which is extremely boring.
4. Improvising cinematic cool shit is usually less optimal in termns of raw rules. Its always better to strike with your longsword than smashing a chair into enemy's skull because "improvised weapon is d4 and longsword is d8". This discourages creativity.

5.1 Tons of "you don't get to play the game" effects. I could see "mind control" effects kind of fun if you just tell your player "now you get to pvp legally, have fun". but stun/paralise? okay, you took time out of your week/month to come play the game and now you just sit there for half an hour doing nothing while other players take their turns because you failed a save. Or maybe even more if you fail your consecutive save. Great game design guys.

5.2. Roll to hit is basically the same shit. Fighter waits their turn for 20 minutes after all spellcasters doing their shit, rolls 5 and 7 on his two attacks and can go make coffe feeling he didn't do anything.

5.3. Saving throws are weird too. Either you wasted your only 5 lvl slot and nothing happens, or enemy just stunned you (see 5.1). I get it that "save or die" effects are less common now, but they just became "save or suck" and you still don't get to play the game even if your character sheet is still technically there. Maybe some gradation system could be cool, dunno.

1. A lot of character archetypes just suck in terms of player fantasy. Wanna be a cool necromancer? Okay, you can summon...1 skeleton. When you're at least lvl 3. And after 1 round of combat he is dead and you're just slinging fire bolts again. Wow, thats definitely what I imagined when I wanted to play cool necromancer. Sure...

2. DMG says the system balance is build around 6-8 medium difficulty encounters per long rest. When you're trying to play anything other than tightly packed dungeon crawl (but remember, D&D is not just dungeon crawl anymore, its versatile system and you can play any type of game with it!!!) you usually have on average 1 meaningful combat per day. So either martials feel shit because spellcasters go nova every time, or you have to come up with bullshit 6-8 combats per DAY, which take several sessions. Wow, we've been playing this campaign for a year and it's been...3 days in game time? and all pcs are suddenly demigods now even though we _just_ entered this dungeon. Sure you can tell "use gritty realism rules", then its the other way around. Your wizard casts their 5 spells in 1-2 in game days...and the rest of the week just spamming firebolt and feels like shit. Maybe we could balance character classes without spreading them between "short rest based" and "long rest based" so I as dm dont have to fucking juggle this balance myself every time I try to make a story?

3. It feels like lvl20 is there mostly for marketing purposes trying to sell you godlike power fantasy? who actually plays at these levels? All i ever see online is people saying its basically impossible to make actually good games at this point and system is just broken.

4. Lorewise its cool that humans live 80 years and elves live 700. But I do not buy that an elf with 250 years of life experience would find any common ground with an 18 year old human. Have you ever tried to communicate with people 10 years younger than you? It already feels like talking to a toddler, imagine 250 year difference. And also they both get to cast 2 spells a day? Come on...

5. Can I have a cost for every magic item please? If I want the "they are rare and not really tradable" feeling that dmg tries to force on you, I can do it myself. But why the fuck do I have to actually come up with item cost myself if i need to?

What I actually like:
11. Complexity level for new players. 5e made it reasonably easy to learn the game. I would be okay with a simpler system, but probably not more complex one.
12. Large bestiary of cool thematic monsters made over the years. But I could just steal these into a different system...
13. (dis)Advantage system is pretty cool
14. Its kind of actually good in being middle ground base for different types of games. Yes, it sucks in lots of specific ways, but in general it feels like you can combine different elements into a single game fairly well.
15. 5e has made a good job in lowering the amount of random "+1" effects that I have to track for every little thing. pathfinder sometimes feels like im doing math homework instead of actually playing the game.
16. I like rolling dice other than just d6s. Although my favourite d12 is still too rare...
17. I like generic heroic fantasy as main focus of the system

I mean, technically I could come up with homerules fixing these things...but I feel like it would be easier to just fucking make a new system from scratch. I mean there has GOT to be a system that already exists and doesn't have these problems?
Thank you so much if you read this far.

it's hard to describe, but basically in lancer it's very limited, very strict and so you can't just imagine something, you have to pick from a list of existing stuff and so Idk if there's any system that is made to allow for custom made stuff, that work around vibes and that could maybe be all theatre of the mind? but still with rules and overall a system

Basically, I want something that offers a similar level of character creation stuff as the Mekton Technical System rules but a little less crusty and aged. Cuz I really don't care for the ruleset and there's certain amount of like clunky stuff that feels like game design parts that didn't age well.

After a conversation with a friend yesterday, I got suddenly curious about a general category of TTRPGs I'm not sure I have a convenient label for other than what I assume is the granddaddy of them all, Gamma World - games set in weird science-fantasy worlds far in the future and/or after some manner of apocalypses, filled with all kinds of mutants, psychics, robots, maybe aliens, strange technologies, and probably more than their fair share of strange playable nonhumans.

Some examples (besides GW itself) would be things like Vaults of Vaarn, Cloud Empress, and The Electrum Archive; at a stretch you could probably also include things like The Wildsea and Songs for the Dusk, and in other media this would be video games like Caves of Qud, Nuclear Throne, maybe Fallout, or the Ghibli movie Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

Anything else that I've missed?

Tento separá-los por famílias políticas principais; fica mais conciso e consigo focar nos membros mais importantes. Me sinto péssimo em criar NPCs genéricos... Mas criar tantos detalhes ainda é bem cansativo; existe alguma maneira de otimizar esse processo criativo? (The system is Dungeon World.)

I have a player of a mage in Mage: The Awakening 2e. This player has not particularly invested in mundane abilities for their character much, if at all.

After one particular challenge that the PC failed to succeed at using mundane means, the player expressed a preference that challenge difficulties should be calibrated such that mages can succeed on them easily enough using purely mundane means, without having to buff up or otherwise cast spells.

I can see where they are coming from, certainly.

In the end if the expectation is that people are gonna prebuff all the time then you encourage that to become the case.

But on the other hand, I specifically, explicitly said that the PCs had time to buff up to tackle the challenge ahead of them. And on the other hand, if I calibrate challenges such that mages can succeed easily enough without the use of magic, then any mage who does elect to cast some spells will simply smash through everything.

I have talked to the player about it (over a couple of days, by this point), and they really seem to prefer a setup wherein mundane abilities are perfectly sufficient to overcome challenges. But again, if I do that, then it means that a mage (e.g. this person's PC) can just opt to go gloves-off and "lock in" at any given moment to trivialize all challenges.

I do not know how to handle this. What expectation should I set?

For reference, here was the challenge in question. They were in the Hedge. There was an enchanted, warded door that demanded an excellent, really excellent song and dance performance to pass: one success on a roll of [lower of Dexterity or Presence] + Expression − 5. I told the players that they had ample time to buff up. This particular player wanted to tackle the challenge purely mundanely, and assembled a dice pool of Attribute 3 + Expression 3 + Willpower 3 − penalty 5 = total 4. However, the roll failed; the player remarked that I made it too difficult, and I mentioned that I expected the PCs to actually buff up.

This particular character had Gnosis 3, Fate 1, Forces 1, Matter 4, Mind 3, Prime 3. They were accompanied by a mage with Gnosis 3, Life 3, Mind 3, Space 3, Spirit 3. I feel as though Fate 1's Quantum Flux alone could have done a lot, to say nothing of heavier-duty spells.

Playing around on the wayback machine I re-stumbled on RPGHost after not seeing it for who knows how long and I'm struggling to find any leads on what happened to it.

Looks like it turned into a generic SEO listicle site in 2017 and went whole-hog on the listicle articlespam in ~2020. Anybody know anything? I don't have any info on any of the old staff to piece together the story myself. It seems like the site and its sister sites were owned by Minion Development/Minion Games but I don't know who all comprised that group. BGG says that the owner passed some undisclosed year (RIP) but there were a lot of sites under the RPG[Something] family for one guy to run and RPGHost itself got sold/sniped while the owner was still active.

So far that's the little bit I've got. Any tips to figure the rest out, or anybody know the whole story? Anybody got other RPG website mysteries to share?

What are some cool games to try that are either zero prep or gmless. Some background and details for what I am looking for.

In our group, we have a range of people enjoying more "roleplay vs more mechanics". Our normal games started as DND and are now Daggerheart. I am the forever GM. Some games we tried and we liked: Bluebeard Bride, Candela Obscura, Mothership. I am looking at trying more PbtA, but that is a separate thing than this post.

Not looking for something in the same genre as Daggerheart.

Games that are closer to what I am looking for and we tried:

- Alice is missing: very nice and immersive experience. Most of us liked it. Nice that it was somewhat detected.

- for the queen: while I liked it, the others felt it is too open and too Writer's Room vibes

Most of the group is not that much of a "writer/theater kid" that will just jump on roleplay with a prompt and nothing else. For example, Fiasco sounds like it could maybe go well, but might also skirt to close to open ended "write a cool story" territory. Games like Dialect or Icarus, while I find intriguing, I think they will not land for our group.

EDIT: Ideally something whwre you don't need to read a 130pg book to get started :)