**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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This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

**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.

----------

This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

Been running Daggerheart for a bit and figured id share my thoughts, posting here instead of the Daggerheart subreddit because that subreddit has a habit of jumping down your throat anytime you even imply that Daggerheart isn't perfect.

Im gonna separate this into Pros, Cons and Thoughts. And I want to be clear this is my own feeling on the game.

I am also not taking into account 'oh you can homebrew away this issue so its not an issue' cause you can homebrew anything and everything.

Pros
-I like the 2d12 system, im pretty neutral on the actual dice it's self but I do like that a crit is done if you get 2 of the same number. this has led to moments where someone rolls double 1's and we are all 'ouch bad roll sorry mate....wait a minute' its fun

-I like how damage and HP are done, so its basically impossible to one shot the players. Which is grea.

-I like the minion rules i.e how damage overflow lets you hurt more than one minion with a single stab. Lets the people who dont have area of effect still feel like badasses.

-The different features for weapons and armour is pretty cool

-I like that to me it feels like DnD-Lite. There are some games ive wanted to run were DnD felt like the best system but I just haven't been motivated to run DnD cause of just how much there is. So this is the perfect system for those games.

-Its easy enough to homebrew giving players extra experiences and powers, just because of how little the experiences and certain powers help from a mechanical aspect. Yes this goes against my thing about not mentioning homebrew but I felt this was a good enough pro that id mention it anyway

Cons

-If you don't have Hope you kinda lose your experience. Kinda. Wth experience if things aren't dangerous its expected that if you have an experience say 'Master Acrobat' then you just succeed at things acrobatic like. But if there is danger involved say guards shooting at you. Then it just gives a flat bonus to you check IF you spend Hope. If you don' spend Hope then all your training goes out the window and you are as skilled as John who saw a trapeze one time twenty years ago.

-Fear is not for me. Basically the fear system is a resource te GM tracks and the players can see, and is used for a lot of things. If you want to use some NPC special attacks you spend Fear, want multiple NPCs to go you spend fear etc etc. Cool in theory but because its based on luck of the dice you can get to a BBEG fight and just have no fear to do anything, or the players can roll like shit and barely survive the BBEG then look over and see your 12 Fear and know you went easy on them.

It's a balancing act that requires the dice to not lean too heavily one way, and sure you can always use Fear for ANYTHING but if i go 'i spend a fear and you get cold chills and that's all that happens' my players will call bs after a while. I've found some work arounds, but they dont always work.

-Moving in combat can SUCK. This is something ive found as a player. In the game I play as I play a melee guy with low Agility (he's blind) and so what i've found is that if im ever too far from an enemy like say I get knocked away) then I am incentivized to just sit out the rest of the fight because moving requires a dice roll, and failure means 1 of 3 things (I dont move at all, I move part way, something bad happens) so failure means 2/3 times I dont get close enough AND i always just hand over the spotlight. Me sitting down and doing nothing is more beneficial to the party than me trying to get closer.

I get that the rule is done so players just dont go 'i move. i move. i move. i haven't rolled once and now im all the way in another country before the enemies can do anything' but it sucks for those who aren't trying to cheese it.

-I don't like the initiative system. 'oh but its more cinematic!' i don't care, it leads to a lot of players unsure of who should go and I as GM am doing a lot already I don't want to keep a mental tally of who has or hasn't gone in a while. I do like the token optional rules though we do it with 1 - 2 tokens and not 3.

I have two other issues with the initiative system.
One being that it discourages risky plays. Because failure is going to pass the spotlight to the enemies you are discouraged from acts that are likely to fail. in other games the enemy is gonna go or not go, your action doesn't change that but in this failure makes them go more often so failure can feel like it's penalizing more. An yes the rules of play says 'take risks' doesn't change that the mechanics encourages the opposite

Also this i an odd one but it makes it harder to come up with conditions/status effects. Lts say in any other game you are poisoned. This is easy to do, each turn you take poison damage until the poison is gone. But how do you do it in Daggerheart? If you do it each time the PC acts then they just may not act until the healer takes 3 turns to heal the poison. but if you do it as a countdown say each time the spotlight changes from pcs to NPCs then the PC may get screwed over by their party having bad rolls and die before they can act which is just mean.
A lot of status effects that would normally be 'on your turn x happens' are hard to reproduce in Daggerheart cause initiative system.

Thoughts

-The game very much is made with combat in mind. You can say its not all you want, but this game has one of the most impactful weapons tables ive seen, where there is a wide variety and a lot of them matter. It also limits what weapons and armour you can have by tier because it KNOWS that some are too powerful for lower tiers. Combat very much is baked into the game, and it's intended to be a key part of the game.

-They should remove the 'if you dont have a spellcasting trait you cant use a magic weapon' rule because like 2 classes dont have a spellcasting trait, it just feels mean to those classes that they miss out on some of the most fun weapons

-Its weird that you can have a max of 5 of each consumable. This feels like its trying to go off of Numenera's cypher system which has 3 consumables max. but 5 of EACH is so high that it feels like its not even a limit.

anyway thats my thoughts, I know i said more about the negative than the positives but that's just cause its easier to express those thoughts. But I do actually like the game.

So, pretty straightforward. What are some TTRPGs, both new and old, with the most complex rules you've ever seen? To the point that they need heavy house ruling or are downright unplayable?

I'm DMing a Fabula Ultima campaign with all the atlases (High Fantasy, Natural and Techno) for 3 months now, it is nowhere near the end but one of the players is getting more involved in his work and we are going from a weekly game to an almost monthly game.

I'm thinking of DMing another campaign to the same players minus the overburden one, but I want something that feels the exact opposite to what we are playing now. Call of Cthulhu and other high lethality games would be the logical answer, but I want something that is still able to play a middle to long term campaign.

What you suggest would be the best system to completly change the mood of the table?

Hello

I'm looking for some recommendations on software I could use to make character cards for a miniatures game. I'm super inexperienced, but I don't mind learning, but nothing horribly complex. Something that looks clean and it doesn't need to be flashy.

Is there a free software option that is user friendly?

Appreciate any suggestions.

As many people of my generation and heritage, I'm a huge fan of the Heroes of Might & Magic series of video games, but I've also long had a fascination with their parent Might & Magic games.

For the unfamiliar, a notable aspect of Might & Magic (one that's basically entirely absent in the Heroes spinoffs, or in the newer games in the franchise after the Ubisoft reboot) is that beneath the facade of classic high fantasy - dwarves, elves, dragons, undead, the whole shebang - the setting of the games is, in actuality, a science-fiction one: the Ancients were a powerful spacefaring civilization who created all those magical creatures and the worlds they lived upon, they had a war with another species called the Kreegans (who resemble, and are literally presented as, demons), which severed connections between their worlds and caused their civilizations to regress to medieval technological states.

So whenever you would adventure in those games, every now and again you would encounter security robots or technological weapons left behind by the Ancients, or dungeon crawl through an old crashed spaceship, and the main antagonist of the first several games in the series is an android, even though he doesn't obviously look like a sci-fi robot. That sort of thing.

Over in TTRPGs, I've always been fond of science-fantasy that's a much more...obvious mix of the two (Starfinder was one of my favorite RPGs for some time), but lately I've been wondering whether any tabletop games take a similarly subtle approach to combining the two genres in their worldbuilding.

Honorable mentions I want to get out before the comments do:

• the elves in Pathfinder's Lost Omens setting came through magical portals linked to another planet in the solar system, ie. they're basically aliens (and yeah, Numenera's crashed spaceship is a big Might & Magic homage, among other things)

• Numenera might count? Aesthetically it's a little too obviously technological for my taste, but "layers and layers of ancient tech so advanced it's basically magic to the modern-day inhabitants of the world" is kind of there as a vibe

• The Electrum Archive, with its bygone Elders and some rare advanced weapons and magical ink they've left behind, has some of this that I quite liked

• Can't forget the grandfather of it all, D&D's Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. It's a one-off module rather than the basis of the entire D&D cosmology, but it's still a classic.

If you were telling someone what you're doing today and one of those plans is getting together with friends to play Traveller or Shadowdark or a similar game, what do you tell them?

Regardless of the system I'm playing, I always tell people I'm playing D&D. It's a good shorthand because just about everyone knows what it means, whereas a phrase like "tabletop RPGs" or the name of the specific game are only likely to mean something to someone who's also involved in the hobby, and even then they might not know the game I'm talking about. Possibly it's my mostly offline experience but when it turns into a longer conversation I've never once had someone get confused or upset when I clarify that the particular type of D&D I'm playing today is actually a space game rather than the trademarked game of that name.

I'm really curious what other people say in the same position, so thank you for sharing : )

I run games for lots of different people and I noticed that some of them bring their own rituals from other tables. The one that stands out is to hold a hand to their head when talking out of character. I've never said anyone needs to do this, and have never done it myself. I guess it's just habit with them. To be clear, I have no problem with it and actually find it kind of endearing.

What are things your table does, or other players do, that are unique?

Harnmanor is, to me, the gold standard of subsystems. it's complex but intuitive, in depth but boils down to a simple money in-->money out so it's scaleable. it also generates you a fully detailed village on the side down to the level of families. what other subsystems are there that are like this? no limits on topic, I just love a kickass subsystem

Hello [r/RPG](r/RPG)!

I’m seeking to broaden my gaming experience outside of D&D and I’m curious what websites and resources are available to learn about new systems? Reddit and DriveThruRPG are what I know about currently, plus StartPlaying.Games (to see what others are playing.)

For example, I’m interested in playing a Studio Ghibli-esque game and I’ve learned about Yazebas Bed and Breakfast but I’m curious what other games might be great for that kind of story.

On the other hand, I’ve played a one shot of Daggerheart and had a great time and a one shot of Old School Essentials and…not so much. Before I commit to buying a book to run for my table I would love to see what else is out there.

I know I may be setting myself up for analysis paralysis but I’d love to just get a better understanding of what games are balanced and “worth” playing (I know that’s a completely loaded term!).

For PC Gamers, something like the Discovery Queue or Steam Labs but for RPGs would be cool (but I understand probably doesn’t exist!)

Any help is appreciated.

To begin with, I'm not trying to create an exact 1-1 recreation. I know that certain parts of metroidvanias just don't translate well to tabletop RPGs, especially in terms of combat and platforming and such.

What I'm more interested in is the world and the progression. I have a lot of ideas for an interconnected, diverse kingdom built within a single structure; Hollow Knight and Silksong are huge inspirations for this, I love the idea that all of these regions are so distinct but clearly connected to and influence its neighbors. I also really like the vertical design and would probably homebrew ways to make traversal possible. The map would probably be sort of simplified; i.e. is a simple map players fill out as they progress, solid colors with a few doodles suggesting what may be in that room (like the menu map in hollow knight)—this would allow me to both have set, pre-designed rooms and rooms where I have the freedom to make things up to fit the needs of the campaign.

I'm also interested in blocking off certain areas and encouraging backtracking. Some of this would be through items (and maybe abilities), but I also think there's lots of room for story-based "keys", like "this mechanism won't move until you activate its source, which is in another region", "these people won't let you inside their area (which contains the only path to where you need to go) until you take care of some greater threat keeping them secretive", etc. These things would have ripple effects—maybe activating that gear starts up a tram system, maybe solving the threat actually opens up multiple new paths, etc. Creative freedom and alternate paths/solutions would be allowed and encouraged, but there'd probably be a select few non-negotiable roadblocks.

Here are my biggest questions:

- My party would be 3-4 players I know very well, but metroidvanias are designed around single-player, and I'm worried about finding a balance between allowing the players to split up and make their own decisions while also making sure that they progress through the world as a single unit. I don't want Player A to use a lever in the east side of the map to open a door that's in the west, but player B is in the south and has no in-character reason to travel back up to the newly opened door, etc. Maybe some kind of limitation that allows splitting up but only staying in the same general area? I could probably work in some narrative explanation for that, but would that feel too restrictive?

- How do I keep the "in between" rooms - the areas between major points of interest, rooms that'd be just for combat or platforming in a game like hollow knight - from being boring and repetitive? This feels especially important for backtracking. How do I keep it from just being "we go back to this region" without encountering the same enemies over and over again? What about things like secrets, reasons to stop and look around in each area? How could those be adapted to a tabletop format? The total amount of these rooms would probably be much fewer than in an actual metroidvania because of the lack of platforming/fast combat, but I think there'd still be a need for at least some.

- What about classes and progression? I feel like a game like this would work best if progression was based on items and equipment rather than leveling. I feel like classes, also, don't really work as well if the whole group is meant to be progressing as a unit, but I don't want the players to feel like copies of each other either.

- What system would work best for this? Ideally something fairly open-ended. Should I just design my own? It'd be my first time attempting something like that.

- Am I just biting off more than I can chew with this concept? Is this flawed from the start?