**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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I'm looking for games that depict a truly miserable existence. Settings are fine, but I'm really interested in mechanics that model things being awful. I'm looking at things like the burden system from Hard Wired Island, or how the colonizers work in Dog Eat Dog. Systems that put stress on the players and maybe feels antithetical to a power fantasy.

No need to recommend Warhammer as in familiar with it .

Hey all.

After many moons of playing Pulp Cthulhu, I've decided to try my hand at running my own game for some friends new to tabletops, plus an experienced forever GM finally getting to be a player. As a big fan of Cyberpunk anything, I of course leapt to Cyberpunk RED, but only a few months in I realized I'm just not that keen on the crunchiness and frankly pretty superfluous amount of numbers involved in combat. Now I know RED is the least crunchy instalment but when I've got a collective 2 braincells at the table and combat is taking us over an hour to resolve a 4v4 against mooks, the drive shrinks. So I've been looking and searching and asking I've come to the conclusion I'd really like to run a Remnant 2/Remnant FtA campaign. Hopeful apocalypse, guns, magic, adventures. That's kinda the 4 beats I aim to hit. I come to you, humbly, for advice on a system that would let me run something like that but with quick and dirty combat, so that we can put our bi-monthly 3 hour sessions to the best use.

Has anyone ever run a game where there is a fairly significant distinction in power level between the PCs? I’m not talking about D&D style adventurers with a level or two difference. I mean things like Superheroes and sidekicks, dragons and riders, protector and protectee, or Jedi with Padawans? What needs to happen to make such a party successful? Are there any pitfalls that need to be avoided/mitigated? Are there systems that would handle such a party better than others? Curious if anyone has ever done something like this and how it went.

Hello to all. I have been a GM for a long time and I love to play many different systems (nowadays my favorites are Pathfinder 2e, Ars Magica, Blades in the Dark, Masks, and now Burning Wheel).

I have GM'ed a short campaign in a "made-up-on-the-spot" scenario with some of the players in my community (themed after Bloodborne) and a "solo" game with a friend in the Game of Thrones universe, where she played a female version of Jon Snow in a "what if" situation. Both games were a blast and the players loved it.

Now, I want to run a big campaign in GoT using Burning Wheel. I just feel that it matches perfectly with the theme of the world and my style of GM'ing, and I'd love some suggestions from Burning Wheel veterans here.

First, in character creation, I'm thinking of creating some choices using the lore from the books and adapting elements from The Blossoms Are Falling for the House part. I really didn't like the official A Song of Ice and Fire RPG, but I love the house building of that system and I'd like something similar. Does anyone have some ideas on how to proceed?

Second, the list of skills. Which is the best approach? Use them all but only focus on the ones my players pick? Or generate a list of skills exclusive to my campaign?

And regarding the magic, I'd love to have the mysterious feeling of low magic but with high consequences from the TV show in my game. I feel the core game already can provide that, but I'd love to hear some ideas from you.

Besides that, it would be nice to hear suggestions and tips for creating and GM'ing this kind of game.

Thanks already for reading until here :D

What do you actually need before you can run a game in a setting you've never seen before?

Been chewing over this and wanted to ask people who actually sit at the table a lot.

Say someone hands you a setting cold (could be a published book, someone's homebrew notes, whatever) and says "run something in this." What's the stuff that actually has to be there for you to feel like you can do it? And what turns out to not matter as much as people think?

A few things I have going back and forth on in my mind:

Do you actually want the history of a place fully nailed down, or is it more fun when some of it is genuinely unresolved and up for grabs?

Does it bug you when names and slang in a setting feel randomly generated vs actually meaning something?

Have you ever picked up a setting that looked amazing on paper but was a nightmare to actually run? What was missing?

Mostly just trying to figure out where the real value is versus what's just padding. Any input gratefully received.

I'm looking for a good, balanced TTRPG system for a campaign that mixes the Wild West, dinosaurs, pirates, and creatures inspired by Monster Hunter Stories / World / Wilds.

The only system I know is Ordem Paranormal RPG, a Brazilian RPG system. It's not very balanced, but in the worst case, I'll run the campaign with it after making a huge homebrew. Still, I'd like to learn about other systems before deciding.

The system people recommend to me the most is Savage Worlds, but I'm really afraid of the exploding dice mechanic. I'm worried that I might end up creating an immortal monster, or, on the other hand, a random farmer with a shotgun could get a critical hit and kill a giant dinosaur in one shot.

I also looked into Wilderfeast, but from what I've seen, the mechanic of eating monsters to gain their traits seems to be a major part of the system. I don't know how much that would affect the kind of campaign I want to run, or if it's possible to remove it without breaking the game.

My concerns with each system:

• Ordem Paranormal RPG: d20 system, would require a huge homebrew, monsters are designed not to die easily, and players are designed to stack buffs on themselves and debuffs on the monsters.
• Savage Worlds: I'm afraid of the exploding dice mechanic.
• Wilderfeast: I'm not sure whether the monster-eating transformation mechanics are optional or fundamental to the system.

I'm open to any suggestions!

I'm about to start running Starfinder, which will be my first time running a non-traditional fantasy setting. Does anyone have any suggestions for random tables or oracles they think will be useful for me?

I recently made the jump from running D&D 5e for a few years to trying out a new system with my group, and the experience has been way more jarring than I expected. Not in a bad way necessarily, but there were so many habits baked into both me and my players that we had to consciously unlearn.

Things like expecting a certain action economy, assuming every problem has a mechanical solution built into a character sheet, or even just how combat is paced. Players kept reaching for their character sheets looking for abilities that simply didn't exist in the new system.

What surprised me most was how much the system itself shapes the stories you tell. Moving away from D&D forced us to think about scenes and conflicts in a completely different way, and honestly it's made me a better GM overall.

For those of you who have made a big system jump, I'm curious about a few things. What was the hardest habit to break, for you or your players? Did the new system eventually feel natural, or does it always feel a little foreign? And do you think the growing conversation around alternatives to D&D has made it easier to convince groups to try something new?

Would love to hear what systems people landed on and whether you ever went back.

Hello all!
I've been relentlessly obsessed with some horror-related media lately, and this led me to working on a campaign drawing from all of those medias(mainly The Magnus Archives, How to Survive Camping, Scarlet Hollow, very specific episodes of Doctor Who).

To be quick: The campaign's basic setup is that there's this guy, Alec, who owned and managed his family's large estate, which is a sort of "gateway" to a large area of wilderness(likely somewhere in England). The estate and the wilderness connected to it are both filled with supernatural creatures, events, things and phenomena, as well as haunted by the land's own history. Alec disappears under mysterious circumstances, and in accordance with his will a friend of his sends out many letters written by Alec to aquintances of his who may have interest or connection to supernatural events or phenomena, posthumously hiring them to care for, explore, catalogue, and deal with the estate and whatever lurks in it. These aquintances(the ones who accepted at least) would be the players.
Now, since the estate itself is technically infinite(sort of like the house in Blue Prince or parts of the campground in How to Survive Camping), this would involve a lot of exploration, and no small amount of learning to deal with the most common phenomena. I had found roughly 3 systems I can see work for this, but I cannot choose between them. Here are my choices and reasonings.

1. Monster of the Week: This was my first thought as it is a very open ended system and the playbooks make characters feel nicely different from each other. On the other hand, it seems to be a bit too much about directly challenging the supernatural and needing new places to investigate for each threat.
2. Liminal Horror: I've not dug too deep into the system, but it seems straightforward and classless, which while not a requirement of mine, seems like it would facilitate more player creativity. I'm not sure how combat focused the system is, however, as that would detract from the intended experience.

3. The Magnus Archives RPG: A huge fan of the podcast, this was one of the first ones I looked into, and while it seems interesting, I'm not sure how well the Cypher system would work for this(and it doesn't help I saw a lot of people criticize that system specifically).

   I'd very much appreciate any advice on which of these could work best for my campaign concept(as well as any opinions or experiences y'all have with any of them), or any other systems I do not know of or have not considered.

Howdy, folks! I've been a big fan of Mothership since the 0e days, and figured I'd actually start collecting my recommendations in one place instead of just constantly repeating myself in replies on various websites. If you're not sure where to start, need an adventure to drop into your campaign, or want the next two years of play planned out for you, I've got tips on what to buy for each!

Notably absent from this post: my Prospero's Dream-adjacent recommendations, as we're still in the early days of Mothership Month 2025's deluge of support for the best space station in TTRPGs. There's a ton of good stuff out there... but I want a more comprehensive view of that sub-scene before I cover it!

I always wanted to play Root. The boardgame I mean. I always found it quite alluring, I always loved strategy games and the art and concept always seemed right on my alley. Unfortunately, I did not get the occasion to play it yet. However, I learned that the boardgame also received a TTRPG adaptation, made by none others then Magpie Games. For those who are not aware, Magpie are the reigning kings of PbtA RPGs, with titles such as Masks, Avatar Legends, Cartel and many many others. So when we approached them for a partnership, Root was at the top of my wishlist. They were gracious enough to send a review copy our way and with the occasion of Playcon, an amazing local con which held its first edition back at the end of May I got the chance to run a couple of public sessions there.

Needless to say, I had a blast, I adored the art, the setting and the implementation of PbtA (between us, I actually enjoyed this one way better than Avatar Legends). And it wasn't just me who had a blast with the system, but also my groups of players! So I knew that I had to make a review and explain at large why you might enjoy this little gem. Unfortunately, life is sometimes a bitch and some personal stuff delayed said review, but I am proud to tell you that it is now ready and published!

So if any of you have even the smallest amounts of interest towards lite-political games, fun low fantasy adventure, a nostalgia for series such as Redwall or Guardians of Ga'Hoole I think you should give this game a try! My thoughts at large are found in the review, I hope you will enjoy it and I hope you will give this game a try, I assure you, it will be a fun time!