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Mostly DnD but I'm curious if other systems handles this better.

Might just be because I've DM'd more than I'd played.

But when I'm a player now I'm constantly finding reasons to do anything but attack the closest "enemy" when it's my turn on the initiative.

We recently had an encounter where the party is looking to rescue some hostages. The DM had us immediately roll initiative the moment a member of the kidnappers saw us

But i feel like just because we made eye contact, it doesn't mean we're necessarily fighting.

I'm immediately thinking I should go to their leader to work out an exchange for the hostages.

But I feel like the way the games are set up, i'm supposed to just roll to hit the closest enemy whenever initiative is rolled?

I recently started my first campaign of Mythic Bastionland and so far I am really enjoying everything the system has to offer. I find its mechanics are wonderful for telling a very specific mythical story. In my own head, it reminds me a lot of Sir Gawain or Elden Ring and it really pleases a lot of my special interests in storytelling.

But here is the thing: I find it really hard to convey the specific early medieval images I have in my head to my players, who are very much used to typical fantasy stories as we mostly played B/X or 5e beforehand. So when I may imagine a small 9th century european castle, they still have Minas Tirith or Winterfell in their heads. I also feel like it applies to playing in different cultural settings that are not strictly middle european inspired. I wanted parts of my Mythic Bastionland realm to feel vaguely byzantinian and felt like I had done my research, but still, it was very hard to convey those images and what differentiates them from other places we explored in our games.

Do you have any tricks for guiding your players imagination when playing RPGs that do not rely on the usual visual tropes?

Hi everyone. I hope y'all are well.

I just realized the Elden Ring: Nightreign TTRPG was released back in June, but only in Japan and only in Japanese. I see it is available to purchase on Play Asia.

I can't find any additional information on whether there are plans to translate it to English or other languages. Has anyone local to Japan taken a look at it? Color me curious.

Normally I don't like these kinds of media since I'm already so depressed and miserable, but despite having never played them I can't keep my mind off of the likes of Red Markets, Cy_Borg, and even certain editions of Cyberpunk and Changeling: The Lost. And that candles one I suppose.

Do y'all find anything actually meaningful or cathartic about these kinds of dystopias, ones you're implicitly or explicitly expected to fail in? I personally think if it's all so hopeless, why bother? What meaning do you find in a story like that?

I’m looking to run the alien ttrpg and I’m putting together a list of stuff I’ll need that’s not just the print outs. Anyone who’s ran it before, are there any props that would add any value or immersion to a game?

Kinda of a random post here since I never post on reddit, but most of my friends and players are on reddit and know my main account, so I made this one.

I really miss GM'ing it's been about a couple weeks. Ik not much, but still. I've been overly bored as of recent and I want to tell so many stories to tell and I have a ton of ideas but the problem with it is I only have a small group of players and I want to play my campaigns I already have but most of my players either already GM or are super busy and aren't free. Ik these are common problems and most of you proably already deal with this but even with my works schedule and school I'm relatively open and I love GM even if I'm not great but it's sad being the fact of due to allot of other things I really can't. Does anyone else have this same problem and if so how did you work around it?

I've been in a Draw Steel campaign for nearly a year now and it's been my favorite RPG that I've tried for a few reasons but the biggest one to me is that idea that we are bad-ass heros in the sense that our dice rolls in combat are more about how we succeed instead of being how badly we fail.

Which isn't the say that you can't fail in the game because you can but more that in other RPGs I've played I roll to see if I hit and if I miss a lot it doesn't feel great as a player.

I also enjoy the slighly more fluid nature of the turns in combat in that Players roll and then we go in whatever order we want.

But that said I really am more in love with Sci-fi than fantasy so I'm wondering if there's any sci-fi games where the mechanics are similar.

So I was browsing some TTRPG shopping sites to buy from, as of my players and I starting to get bored of the current TTRPG we were playing for about a year, I came across the Dune TTRPG. Now I and my group don't know any sort of lore about the Dune universe, apart from some sort of desert planet and The Sandworms, but I thought the concept sounded pretty enjoyable, with sci fi desert cities and such. I was just wondering if it's a good TTRPG for a group that have never read the books or played the game, and if any of you have any tips on running it if it is any good.

Yesterday's discussion on owning or buying books you don't run really gave me some insight and made me less afraid of buying a book because I think I would like it. However, I still have an issue with thinking of TTRPG books as something to 'play' instead of something to 'read'. (In my head it goes "I can buy an 800 page book for 6-20 dollars, and a TTRPG book will run me $60 and is limited if I can't play/run it.") It's a psychology issue, but one I'm trying to work my way around.

One thing I saw which might help me break that perception a bit was how people like to hack ideas or mechanics from some games into other games they play. Some of this makes sense to me, I figured I could take the bestiary of Vaesen or Dolmenwood, and slide them into CoC or MoTW as an investigation for my players, with the stat blocks adjusted a bit. I saw someone mention Pirate Borg as a way to do ship to ship combat, which I think could come in handy for Daggerheart... And I'm sure I could hack the setting/world building of Cosmere into a DnD or Daggerheart game.

But I am curious on what some other things you like to hack into other games are, just so I can get a better understanding of how it works. As a new GM I've been a bit scared of hacking, and just sticking with official material and my own original stories for the time being, to get things going. So for those of you who do hacking, whether a little or a lot, what do you like to hack and how do ya do it?

I am familiar with internal alchemy as it exists in esoteric history - ie, the practice of neidan in Taoist spiritual practice - but in a number of disparate RPG books such as VtM 5e or GURPS, there is this seemingly unrelated but frequent concept of swallowing ingredients to create potions inside your body.

Does anyone know where this version of internal alchemy originated from? It being across multiple game systems to me suggests a common origin, maybe in an older TTRPG or perhaps a fantasy book, but I haven't found it.

Hi all good people. I'm wondering what device do you use to view those wonderfully colorful rulebooks?
I'm sitting in front of a computer screen most of the day and use an older Kindle Paperwhite to read books offline, but this reader is not suited to pdf's at all, not to mention it has a black and white display.

So I'm pondering my orb purchasing either a reader with a colour display, or a tablet. And here comes my question - what works for you best?

EDIT: Thank you guys for the responses. Reading on my phone is too cumbersome, I'll search for a tablet.
Thanks a lot.