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TLDR: Younger players will just kill and loot everything, including each other, refuse to admit when they're overpowered and get mad if their characters are punished or killed. How can you guide them away from that kind of playstyle?

I've GMed about five or six campaigns for kids / teenagers and I just started another similar gig for a local school. Something that's happened with basically every group is that most of the players just play the game like they're playing GTA. All they care about is killing as many people as possible, acquiring as much loot as possible and just acting like bullies towards every NPC, and sometimes towards other party members.

I've tried many solutions for this over the years, with mixed results.

- Outright banning PvP combat. This is one I always stick with now: if I don't enforce this, someone is inevitably trying to kill someone else's character, and it inevitably ends with someone losing their character, getting mad and using their next character to plot revenge on their rival's character. Some especially sadistic kids will also circumvent that rule by just attacking whatever the other players care about, since the other player can't attack them to retaliate. I once had a player just kill the NPC sister of another PC because he was "bored" and said he could kill her because she was a non-human race, therefore a monster.

- Putting the players in front of NPCs that could easily overpower them. That doesn't usually seem to work: players either understand that they shouldn't mess with this particular character and just wait to meet someone else to become murderous villains or they try to attack the OP NPC until they win or their character dies. Obviously, they get pissed when their character dies, which makes them want to roll an even more murderous character. Some players are also comically bad at understanding that they're not playing on an even field and will insult or threaten to murder kings, to their face, surrounded by the king's guards.

- Wait it out. Ironically, this is what worked the most often. There sometimes comes a point in the campaign where players get very attached to a specific NPC in the campaign and they make them part of the gang, defending him against any threat. The game instantly becomes more fun when this happens, because at least the players have one thing they can interact with meaningfully... but sometimes it just doesn't, and those players just keep bullying everything they find until the campaign ends.

- Asking the players to come up with motivations for their characters that go beyond "becoming the most powerful" or "becoming richer". I'm trying this one out now, with mixed results so far. Some players (the least murderhobo ones) actually come up with great ideas, but the most murderhobo minded will just reflavor "I want to kill everything that stands between me and a gold coin" and still justify their character being a complete monster to everybody.

I'm always stumped when faced with this kind of behavior from younger players. I get that, at that age, you really want to break rules and to go on a power trip when you're constantly being told what to do by adults, and that you think killing people for no reason is the funniest thing ever, or that threatening to kill everyone who tries to split the treasure equally is totally fair behavior. But I'm really wondering how other people would approach this, as my experience with GMing for kids and teenagers is leading me to believe that this is inevitable and that whatever I'm doing to nudge them in another direction isn't working.

My wife and I aren’t part of a gaming group at the moment, but I’d still like to occasionally run something for her. While she’s played D&D, what sparks her interest the most would be something where you play as an innkeeper, or where you farm and forage like Stardew Valley. It’s preferable for it to have an easy entry so we don’t spend forever learning new rules. Does anyone have any suggestions along these lines?

I love running long campaigns but the admin was killing me. NPCs in one place, locations in another, session notes scattered across notebooks and random files. I'd sit down to prep and spend an hour just trying to find what I needed.

still tweak it, though. Anyone else deal with this?

Hi! I bought the core rulebook to eclipse phase 2e a while back and wanted to tap the minds of those wiser than I when it comes to running the system, specifically as part of a more cyberpunk/mystery themed campaign. The system seems really crunchy but I love the flavor, setting, and have a few ideas for campaigns to run.

I have some experience with running 3.5e & 5e DND, as well as Delta Green. Is there anything I should look out for?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/118669/myriad-song-role-play-adventure-of-ten-thousand-worlds

It's a very good space opera game. Kinda reminds me of Savage Worlds, with maybe a bit of Cortex in it. It's a bit heavy and complicated, but I feel like the parts that make it complicated add a decent amount of value.

It uses a dice pool system where you count successes. A lot of things have different recharge conditions, which can seem complicated, but isn't actually that hard to track. Combat has a nice rhythm to it, and has range bands or you can optionally measure.

The setting is interesting. It's very inspired by old school 1960s/70s sci-fi. It is very easy to convert to other settings as well.

Edit: I just noticed they have basically all the supplement books for Myriad Song on sale too, plus some other stuff. Definitely check out the rest of their stuff too: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/793/sanguine-productions

How much preplanning do you do for your campaigns?

I am sort of obsessive. I preplan for months. I am not trying to capture every possible outcome for every plot beat but I do want the over arcing narrative pretty locked down.

I know that no plan survives first contact with players. It just helps to know, in an organized way, where things are headed.

Im a huge sucker for Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. because of that, most of the esoteric ttrpgs i run (Mage the Ascension, Esoterrorist, Delta Green, maybe Mage the Awakening, Unknown Armies) face The Outer Church from that book. (The Outer Church is a cosmic horror cult that worships a a primordial darkness that feeds of shame, horror, compliciency through orwellian mind control.)

I’d like to buy a present for a family member. He enjoys playing single-player RPGs and has a wall full of games. As he knows a great deal about this genre and tends to buy pretty much every game he wants, I’m looking for some lesser-known titles that might delight him.

I checket out his shelf and here are some things that I found:

Final Girl (core + 3 feature films), Arkham Horror LCG (several campaigns), Eldritch Horror, Cthulhu: Death May Die, Too Many Bones (+ 3 expansions), Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, Sleeping Gods, Pandemic Legacy S1, Under Falling Skies, Burncycle, This War of Mine, Freitag, Brass: Birmingham, Slay the Spire, Marvel Champions, Barbarian Prince, a 2D6 Dungeon / D100 Dungeon binder, plus the D&D 5e PHB

Do you have any suggestions?

For me personally, it's usually any ability that does force movement shenanigans because when I started RPGs I loved knocking enemies off of ledges or into hazards.

Another one I've seen players get drawn to are "shape-shifting clothes". Like something out of James Bond, you are in battle gear and suddenly need to be in a tuxedo so the armor transforms into that while still providing protection.

It seems to have an evergreen presence that is in no way challenged by any other place or time. Some genres like Cyberpunk or Noir have their corners, but those do not seem to have nearly the dominance of the generic fantasy.

My partner has asked me to run an introductory TTRPG for her and her two teenage boys.

They've never played any TTRPG before, but do like (simple) board games.

I've run D&D games before.

I'm looking for a game 60-90min which includes premade characters, some role play elements, some fighting, perhaps some puzzles. It needs to have minimal rules.

Any suggestions please?