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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.

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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Been looking into Dolmenwood and it really does seem to have a lot of hard work and love poured into the setting and campaign. As someone newer to the scene, what are some other books that are not necessarily all-in-one, but provide the GM and players a well made world and story to discover?

I've had multiple groups with multiple friends and acquaintances who, upon hearing I've been playing D&D for 10+ years, go: "Oh hey I wanted to try D&D out, can I join your game?"

And I look in their eyes and I see how they don't want to play D&D per se. They want to try out a TTRPG, but are not prepared to read up on game rules, learn the spells, fill their character sheet on their own. I foresee how I'll have to handhold them throughout the entire process, and even during actual play I'll have to constantly explain and reexplain the rules to them, because they won't learn them even years into a campaign.

But I have played Dungeon World, and it was perfect....... specifically for people like the ones I just described. It's rules-lite, it's great for short campaigns, it gets you into the hobby without too much prep work.

I personally don't like DW that much because it's not an optimizer heaven that D&D or Pathfinder are, so I quickly lose interest both playing and GMing DW, but it's still my go-to when it comes to introducing newcomers to the hobby.

So my question for the community is: what other TTRPG systems have you found \ heard of \ played that are perfect for first-time TTRPG players?

I can only name Dungeon World and Nimble 2e, but there have to be more, I just know it.

I’m a fan of Star Wars in general and I’m aware there are seemingly multiple books that convert the setting to a TTRPG. I want to know what’s people’s thoughts on them? Are they worth buying/playing?

Are there any TTRPGs like Command and Conquer Red Alert? Specifically a campy Alt Sci-Fi History with bonkers factions and weapons.

With Tim Curry passing away, I'm growing nostalgic for Red Alert 3.

Stuff like:

• Chrono Legionnaire
• Multigunner IFV (with Dog/Bear inside them)
• War Bears
• Tesla Trooper
• Rocket Angel (Exosuit Sailor Moons)
• Steel Ronin
• King Oni

Recently I've also seen the trailer for Dorf (a C&C inspired game):

• Giant spiked metal gerbil balls

Note: Don't recommend Warhammer 40k, I'm already aware and its too fantasy sci-fi.

A lot has been said about modern versions of games being betrayals of their original conceits or audiences, but at least we can kind of see some vestigial elements or other aesthetic or thematic tissue connected to its origin. I wonder about the truly out there cases, the ones where the jump from first to last edition leaves you wondering why the game still keeps its name.

I've been GMing on and off a campaign in D&D 3.5 and my players are now level 10. We really want to continue, but I'm struggling more and more to put together and run battles in this system. After months of play, I still can't evaluate well the difficulty of the encounters I prepare, and they always end up either trivial or way too hard. And the monsters have so many abilities that I always end up overwhelmed when I run them in play. I'd like to port the characters to another, simpler system, but I don't know which one to chose.

Could you recommend a generic fantasy trad system that does high level (10 to 15 at least) well, has good encounter balancing rules and makes running monsters easy for the GM ? Especially by not giving them too many abilities ?

Of course, I've considered Pathfinder (either 1e or 2e), but while it does encounter balancing well, I've heard that it's even worse than D&D in terms of number of abilities to juggle.

Do you have any suggestions ? No lightweight narrative systems please. OSR-adjacent might be fine, but not too lethal and my players would still like a bit of crunch in terms of characters abilities.

Hi all! I'm currently working on a system set in a mythicized version of the 1700 BC Levant, heavily inspired by apocrypha, angelology and Judeo-Christian mythology. While I don't mind the occasional divergence from the "historical" aspects of the setting, I do have a particular feel of alterity that I want to preserve. Therefore, it felt like a breach in tonality to simply introduce a DnD style "Gold/Silver/Copper pieces" economy. The time and place I'm trying to portray did not have coinage and relied on a mostly barter-driven palace economy, although I've read that silver by weight was commonly used as a sort of proto-currency.

Iam therefore trying to figure out a system for how the players can acquire/trade for stuff without relying on minted coinage.

In case this is relevant: I plan on basing my system on the skeleton of DnD (mainly because it is the most familiar to both myself and my players), keeping combat, skills, and abilities mostly the same, but revamping classes, race, spellcasting among other things.

One problem I find myself running into is that I am stuck between the two extremes. On the one hand I have "let's just use silver as a stand in currency", which I feel would disrupt the setting as well as robbing the system of a potential cool and useful aspect. On the other hand, just having the items barter e.g. dungeon loot would be hard to systemize, leaving a lot of arbitrary things like who wants which wares, how much they're worth to whom etc. at the DMs discretion (imo a player-hostile and confusing way to handle an economy) and it would be a nightmare to keep track of. It also leaves the question of "what merchant/trader wants what" and "How do we transport substantial amounts of barter wealth".

I struggle to find a sensible balance between the two or to come up with a usable third option. Is there anyone who has previously run/designed working barter systems or maybe has some ideas how to make this work? Help is greatly appreciated.

I’ve played dnd an ok amount. I’ve learned on 5.E and have played in a call of Cthulhu one shot a couple billion years ago. I am currently DMing for a group and we love it but we don’t get together often due to scheduling so I want to start another campaign with the players who are available more often and possibly new friends on a second campaign so I can play more dndlike games.

I want the game to be about a group of (nonmagical) friends who are in an occult club or maybe it’s from a bunch of different stereotypical clubs at school or college. And they unravel the mysteries of the school that may have slight magical or supernatural elements. With problems that you’d see in a show like gravity falls, over the garden wall, stranger things, etc. but maybe even a little less magical than those

I also wouldn’t mind any advice on things that can be non magical plot points because in a nonmagic setting there aren’t really monsters to slay every session so any help on what would substitute the combat portion that would typically be in a dndlike.

Edit:I knew I was missing something, I do plan on homebrewing the whole school grounds and making up the story. I’ll look into what I’ve gotten as answers so far and get back to you guys if I have any questions.

Another broad question, but this is one that came to my mind after yesterday's thread, and really excited me. There's a quote from a book I quite like-Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Messy, True Story Behind the Making of Video Games. That I often find myself reciting whenever I dislike any game or system.

"No one ever sets out to make an intentionally bad game"

There were some really interesting tidbits about how often controversial or disliked systems in games were made with a genuine assumption from the design team. This came to my mind with the Alpha for VtM 6E and the controversial addition of a meta currency. The team themselves admitted in a blog post that they had tried to use Drama for the sake of introducing friction to the story outside the story itself, without feeling punitive towards the players. This however, didn't work as intended ("it added needless bookeeping to something storytellers were already able to do without it") and it seems the team will either be revising it or scrapping the mechanic.

Whether you think it's something that they should have known beforehand or not, I think it's a stark reminder that human error is a very real issue when it comes to game design, whether virtual, board, card, or TTRPGs. Very often a bad mechanic* (itself subjective because people like and dislike different things.) was done because the design team genuinely thought it would make the game or system better.

So that's what I wanted to ask about today, what are some mechanics or systems you dislike, and why do you think the designers made it that way? I don't intend for this to be a negativity thread, quite the opposite really. I want folks to be able to take a hard look at what they dislike, and think about how or why it was made that way. I hope it might generate some interesting discussion or appreciation for something you otherwise dislike.