Anything to do with Charlie Kirk goes here. It will be removed anywhere else in the sub.

This post will be up for a number of days, and then it will go away and that will be the end of Charlie Kirk discussions. The moderation effort required for discussions that are near ZERO PERCENT related to TTRPGs is far too high.

Moderation in this thread will be minimal. If your feelings get hurt, go somewhere else.

Get it out of your systems folks, because this topic ain't happening in the sub any more.

EDIT:

I worded that very poorly.

There have been multiple threads about various creators and various topics that have all degenerated into "NAZIS BAD!" "NAZIS GOOD!" "YOU SUCK!" "YOU SUCK!" and that's just bad for the sub and the mods.

We're trying to keep up, but the subs moderation is becoming difficult when the actual content is buried in slapfighting that's not at all related to the topic of the sub.

While we discuss how to deal with this in the larger picture, this is the current stopgap.

**Come here and talk about anything!**

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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.

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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.

Quinns Quest Reviews: Triangle Agency!

Triangle Agency by Caleb Zane Huett and Sean Ireland is a comedy. It's a drama. It's postmodern. It's magical realist. It's subversive. It's honest. And it even caused a conflict between Quinns and his players. This game is SO MUCH

Hello!

What is your overall review of 4e? What are the best features of this edition? Do you believe 4e still holds up currently, specially faced by other tactical rpgs like PF2e and Drawsteel?

What is your review of the game?

(I’m not a native speaker, I'm sorry about my poor writing)

TLDR : Don’t be afraid of be a GM.

Hello everyone! Since I started playing TTRPG, I have heard A LOT of players say “I would like to try to be a GM, but I’m too afraid.” So I will try to convince you that you shouldn’t. Then I will give you a few pieces of advice.

Here is why I think you shouldn’t be afraid:
-Every GM ever started being a newbie. Being a GM is like everything else, when you start you are not the best in the world. The only way to progress is to actually GMing. The sooner you start, the sooner you will be better.

-I use words like best and better but actually I don’t think that being a bad GM is really a thing as long as you try your best, tell your player what to expect and more importantly respect your player. This means respecting their boundaries and their place in the story. You're not the god of the table, you're just someone that facilitates everyone to write an adventure together. This is not your game, at least not more than your players. You are all in this together.

-”Please be our GM.” As you probably know, we kinda lack a GM in the TTRPG community. Which means even if you think you are bad (which once again, in my opinion, is not really a thing) all the players around the table will be happy to have a GM and therefore are most likely to be kind. (If they are not, run away. You will find other players easily. No one should be rude about a game.) Honestly, I never had a mean player at my table among the hundred of players I encountered.

-”But it’s so much work to prepare a campaign as well as every single session.” Well, I’ve never prepared a campaign more than 4 hours and a session more than 30 min. (Exception for the battlemaps but I just stopped using them). It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take time to prepare. It only means that you should if you actually like doing so. To help you with reducing the time spent preparing there is a good book called “Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master” or this blog article. You should also consider systems that construct the story around the players like Fate or Daggerheart (probably PBTA as well but I haven’t tried it yet). It will reduce the things you have to prepare.

Now, a few advice I would have liked to have when I started:
-If you don’t have a good synergy with a group, don’t stay stuck with it for too long. I spent a lot of energy and time playing with people I didn’t have a good feeling with. Not that there were mean or anything. It’s just that we didn’t have the same vibe. (Btw, it’s also true from a player perspective)

-”You can take a break.” Do you need some time to improvise the opponent stats for a fight or to think about the implication of the last action for the player characters ? Tell your players you need 5, 10 or even 15 minutes to think. At best, they will RP their characters, taking the time to talk to each other. At worst, they will go pee, refill their bottle and order a pizza. This advice is particularly useful if you prepare less 😀

-”Do less fights.” I took 7 years to begin to understand what this meant. I’m still on this road. (Quick disclaimer : If what you love about TTRPG is tactical battles you can ignore this advice.) A fight should happen only if: you want to teach some mechanics to the players or the results of the fight will have real consequences on the story or you need to make the characters (PC or NPC) feel powerful or any other GOOD reason you may have. If it’s just because there are guards in front of the door and the PCs want to go in, just play cinematicly the PCs knock them down and move along with the story.

-”Take you time.” It’s ok to take a few minutes to describe the new place the PCs arrive, the glow in the eye of the boss at the start of the fight, the smell of the rain on the dirty road of a big city. It will help players to immerse themselves. If you are afraid that it bothers them, ask about it at the end of the session.

-”Don’t be alone” You can GM with a friend. It requires a bit of synergy, but as long as you try to give each other some space it will be ok. And if one of you doesn’t know how to make the story progress the other will most likely do.

-”Don’t be alone 2” I hate roleplaying 2 NPCs talking to each other. I have difficulties keeping up my acting. My solution is to bring a friend with me. The kind of friend that doesn't want to spend 4 hours playing TTRPG but likes when I tell them what goes on in my games. So you send them a text telling them you need them to play a NPC for 5 minutes, what is the NPC like and what he want. If they accept you, call them on speaker, or bring them in the room if you are roommates, do the scene and voilà! He will probably say things you didn’t expect but trying to adapt to it is very funny.

-”You can rewind.” If you say something and realise a few seconds later it’s bad for the story or what you have planned. You can rewind. No one will be mad at you. I try to not use it too often but knowing that I can, helps me improvise without fear of making a mistake.

-”You can ask your players” You want to rewind but you’re unsure? Ask your players. This PC should die but it doesn’t feel right? Ask your players. You are not sure that their is too much fight? Ask your players. ect.

Well, sorry for the long post but that's something I wanted for a long time. And now when someone tells me they are afraid to GM, I will just send them this.
Thanks to those who read to the end.

In some games like D&D have so that when you choose play something like an Elf or Dwarf, you gain special mechanics related to the chosen creature, bet it small bonuses to add to your character, a set of special abilities next to a few hindrances or even treat it as basically an archetypes or character class that defines the player almost entirely.

Meanwhile, other games (and I've noticed it more in a few recent indie games) still allows you to pick your race/species/ancestry/kin/whatever, but makes it 100% a simple aesthetic piece with roleplaying implications attached like world history, culture and the like.

On one hand, games that give too many specific mechanics to a creature type make so that it restrict creativity and can railroad into making stuff like "all Dwarves are Warriors or Priests and all Elves are Mages or Archers", especially when Fixed Attribute Bonuses are involved.

On the other hand, I feel that unless you are very comfortable with roleplaying, playing a different creature with no mechanical diversity can make so that you are simply playing a Human with a funny hat.

In my perfect world, all TTRPGs that allow creatures other than Human would have so playing an Elf, Dwarf or whatever gives stuff enough mechanics to feel that you are playing as a different type of being but still offer enough liberty to make any kind of person you want without feeling restricted on your choices.

But if I had to choose between having mechanics or not, I prefer having them but mostly because I prefer games with more rules and fewer.

EDIT:

If I had to give an example of a game that does this kind of mechanic really well is Pathfinder 2e. It gives you the more biological mechanics like size, initial HP, move speed, different senses or anathomy, but make stuff more related to your culture, lineage or personal choices something at your control through Heritages and Ancestry Feats.

Heck, it even found a good work around the Fixed Attributes, where it normaly gives you 2 boost, 1 flaw and a free boost, so you have more control over your character's expresion while still having the mechanical flavor a fixed attribute can give, AND EVEN THEN they still allow you to ignore all that and just pick 2 Free Boosts to any attribute you want, without even needing to ask your GM for permission before hand, but I often don't find myself needing to use this alternative option since the first method gives me enough wiggle room to satisfy me without making me feel that the rules for Ancestry Attributes are pointless.

I've been reading though Harry Potter and some of the magic combat is very exciting and vivid. It makes me want to play an RPG where magic is common enough that these sorts of duels or even bigger battles is common.

My knowledge of RPGs like this is limited as I normally play low-magic-fantasy-grim-dark settings.

I'm really looking for that back and forth spell hurling combat.

Hey fellow RPG enjoyers - I hope this is the right place to ask.

I am a fairly new when it comes to TTRPGS, I played a few dnd session but mostly one shots and no campaign ever did last longer than lvl 3..
Since I played a bit of the most popular one, I thought there must be others that handle some of the (for me) more complicated parts a bit different, like keeping track of everything I can/could do.. I watched people who can min/max their character choices and traits etc. and its a different game by then I feel.. I was just playing for flavor and my immersion I feel.
SO what other rpgs would you recommend for someone like me? I heard good things about Pathfinder, but what edition are people playing and is it hard to get into it?

Thanks in advance

I'm using the free starter rules to run a one-shot, and I've familiarized myself with the rules it provides. But I started looking over the characters, and it mentions several conditions without explanation.

• Taunt - What does it do, and how is it triggered?
• Smoldering & Charged - What do they do?
• Blinded & Frightened - Same. I could intuit these if I needed to, but the actual rules for them would be nice.

Maybe even, would someone even be able to just provide me with a list/picture of the conditions+effects, in case others come up? It's a weird thing to have missing from the quickstart.

Quick help would be very much appreciated. TIA.

(My english is horrible, so i translated everything) I'm a DM, my table is in the third session of our campaign, and I'm trying to introduce the main antagonist by introducing elements that will allow them to imagine and idealize what he's like, perhaps by having the main enemies mention him or something like that. My main idea was to have them associate the color red with him, as a sort of signature of the main antagonist, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

Hey ppl iam looking for a nice Session sheet that i can use every time i have a Session with my players. Iam a bit lazy on takeing notes and want to try if it works better with a premade sheet.

Does anyone has something like a Session sheet / Session log? Maybe even a GM journal or something like that.

Greetings Streetsport

I would love to hear any emotional or meaningful scenes people have had.